
Class ULvililT^ 
Book_J=L_ijL_. 
CopightN" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON, SEATTLE 

ENGLISH COMPOSITION AS 
A SOCIAL PROBLEM 



BY 

STERLING ANDRUS LEONARD, A.M. 

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, HORACE MANN SCHOOL 
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 



LB 15-76 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY STERLING ANDRUS LEONARD 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



•7" 

FEB -7 1317 

©Cl.A4o3958 



CONTENTS 

Editor's Introduction v 

Preface xi 

I. The Sources of Composition Projects in 
Child-Activities i 

II. The Social Group as an Agent in Expres- 
sional Development 35 

III. The Organization of Ideas 68 

IV. Evolution and Attainment of Expressional 

Standards 114 

Outline 195 



EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 

English composition has been one of the least 
interesting subjects taught in the schools. The 
ordinary student has found the task of linguis- 
tic expression a dull exercise. Largely because 
he was provided with no initial enthusiasm for 
composing, speaking and writing in the class- 
room have been formal matters unrelated to his 
personal need to express or communicate his 
feelings and ideas. The pupil has been forced 
to observe the rules and niceties of the English 
language without ever being aware in any vital 
way of their uses to him. The result is that ex- 
pression through language has been the most 
formal and artificial of all the school studies. 
In spite of years of training, our students fail 
to become easy, clear, and forceful writers. We 
are told that the Americans who can speak and 
write with effective fluency have learned the art 
outside of classrooms. 

There is something inherently wrong in our 
methods of instructing youth in the art of lit- 
erary expression. As measured by the canons 
of modern psychology, our traditional modes 

V 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

of teaching are flagrantly faulty. It seems the 
tritest of suggestions to say that a child should 
have some knowledge of the subject which he 
has been asked to discuss. Yet it can scarcely 
be said that we heeded this commonplace truth 
until a decade or two ago. It was customary to 
assign him topics for composition upon which he 
had no real information. If knowledge was sup- 
plied, it was in the form of "more words about 
words." The direct, personal, and vital experi- 
ences of boys and girls were a resource seldom 
utilized by the teacher of thirty years ago. Now, 
fortunately, we are asking our pupils to speak 
of the things they know in an intimate way, 
trusting that the ever-widening circle of interest 
will finally bring them to the ability to discuss 
topics which have a worth to adults. 

But to have knowledge does not imply the de- 
sire or the power to communicate it. Wise men 
with minds filled with knowledge are not contin- 
uously revealing what they know. They are 
often silent in company because there is no need, 
no motive for bringing their intelligence to bear. 
To possess something to say is a fundamental 
condition of worthy expression, but it is by no 
means a final one. There must be a motive, a 
stimulation, which creates the desire or the need 
vi 



INTRODUCTION 

for speech. Defective motivation has been one 
of the greatest causes of poor instruction in 
composition. It is a fault persisting in practi- 
cally all of our contemporaneous classroom work. 
The largest single problem with which the 
teacher has to deal to-day is that of getting ade- 
quate motivation into the composition period. 
Everywhere progressive teachers are experi- 
menting in the hope of finding other means of 
making improved expression vital to elemen- 
tary and high-school pupils. 

One of the first conspicuous results has been 
an enrichment of the subject-matter dealt with. 
We have come to realize that the truth expressed 
by any one is seldom a purely intellectual mat- 
ter. Ideas are colored by attitudes. It is this 
which gives them their vivacity, force, and 
charm. Yet not until recently have we aimed 
at the development of feelings, as well as ideas, 
as part of the content required for speech and 
writing. Our recent enrichment has developed 
the emotional side of self-expression, but in an 
accidental way. The effort was scarcely delib- 
erate. The teacher realized that children were 
more readily enlisted in the recital of their per- 
sonal experiences, which are always colored by 
personal attitude. But the explanation of this 
vii 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

success, if given, was that the children were 
better informed. More in telle ctuaKty was sought 
by the teacher, but he was fortunate enough to 
find a vitalizing by-product in the subjective 
factors of personal experience. 

Much of the failure of schools to develop any 
literary power beyond that of simple, direct ex- 
position and narration is due to this neglect of 
feeling. If it were not for shades of feeling, 
what we know as literary style would not exist. 
Its fine variations of form are due not so much to 
differences of cold objective truth as to the subtle 
variations of attitude with which we confront 
reality. Poetic expression is different from the 
prosaic because of the dominance of the subjec- 
tive factors in our desire to express ourselves. 
We shall never thoroughly enrich our composi- 
tion-teaching until we accept the principle that 
the development of attitudes is as necessary as 
the development of an accurate comprehension 
of the varied world which we are to describe and 
discuss. 

We must not make the mistake of assuming 
that training in composition is purely an indi- 
vidual matter. Most self-expression is for the 
purpose of social communication. We express 
ourselves in the presence of other people to gain 
viii 



INTRODUCTION 

appreciation or stimulation and to influence and 
control others. Our whole use of language has a 
social setting. This truth cannot be ignored in 
any effective accomplishment in the classroom. 
The futility of much of our past teaching has 
been due to our mental blindness to the social 
function of language. One has only to compare 
the situation of ordinary conversation with that 
of a class exercise in oral composition to realize 
how far we have forgotten the social genesis and 
purpose of speech. Worthy social conversation 
cannot be made at command of any person in 
authority. Ordinary human beings would not 
endure hearing the same item of discussion re- 
peated by each person present. Nor would one 
care to say what every one else has already said. 
Yet these are some of the striking characteristics 
of a composition exercise. If we are to make our 
training real, we must naturalize it, which is to 
say that we must socialize our teaching of com- 
position. Nothing is more important to the im- 
provement of results than that we shall use the 
full psychology of linguistic intercourse in teach- 
ing people to talk and write. 

The point of view of this book is novel. It 
will be radical in its reconstruction of teaching 
practice. Our need is to understand the full argu- 
ix 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

ment for this new approach to the subject, and 
to understand what our gross educational expe- 
rience and our special experimentation have to 
tell us about the new procedure. For guidance 
we offer the work of a thoughtful and progres- 
sive author, who knows through experience and 
thought the failures which must be avoided and 
the methods by which we shall achieve a result 
we have long striven for. 



PREFACE 

This study attempts a review of current practice 
in the teaching of EngKsh Composition in the 
light of present theories of education. Most of 
the modes of procedure discussed are, I believe, 
in fairly wide use in grades or in high schools 
to-day, although many of those objected to have 
doubtless been discarded by progressive teach- 
ers, and others noted have been only recently 
developed and are not generally known. Three 
points may be taken as the principal suggestions 
advanced: The first is the ideal of social teaching 
of composition; the English class is here pre- 
sented as a group of good-spirited cooperators 
and critics working upon real projects. The sec- 
ond is the attempted handling of organization 
problems as we may suppose that children's 
minds will work best in mastering them. The 
third is the apparently fundamental distinction 
between matters essential for fixation in uncofi" 
scious habit, on the one hand, and equally es- 
xi 



PREFACE 

sential expressional powers, on the other, to be 
developed through conscious application of com- 
position principles. 

Of my indebtedness to other writers, obvi- 
ously the greatest is to Professor John Dewey, 
who has stated with most helpful cogency the 
ideals of education as a social problem. The 
basic study of the Teaching of English is of 
course that by Professors Carpenter, Baker, and 
Scott. Other more exact acknowledgments I 
have tried to give in footnotes. Chief of my debts 
for constructive suggestions and for criticisms in 
revision are to my former colleagues, Miss Edith 
White, Mr. H. C. Henderson, and Dr. E. O. 
Finkenbinder, of the Milwaukee State Normal 
School, and to Mr. C. H. Ward, of the Taft 
School. Among other friends who have given 
help too pervasive for more specific acknowledg- 
ment are Miss Ida M. Windate, of the Wes- 
tern College for Women, and Professors Joseph 
Jastrow, Karl Young, and C. S. Pendleton, of 
the University of Wisconsin, all of whom have 
been so good as to read parts of the manuscript. 
Many of my students, particularly in extension 
xii 



PREFACE 

classes, have been very real aids indeed. Above 
all I am indebted to Minnetta Sammis Leonard, 
who worked out the basic suggestion of types 
of child-activities as motive forces, and who has 
throughout given untiring encouragement and 
definite, essential help. 

Sterling Andrus Leonard 

Horace Mann School 
Teachers College, Columbia University 
September 20, 1916 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM 



THE SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 
IN CHILD-ACTIVITIES 

Nature provided for the communication of thought by 
planting with it in the receiving mind a fury to impart it. 

Emerson, Education. 

This study is an attempt to discover principles 
by which effectiveness of speaking and writing 
may be best developed in grades and in high 
school. We have to begin with — if we lay hold 
of it right — children's eager desire to express 
what interests them. But though the small 
child insists on your listening to his flood of re- 
marks, he does not really care enough about their 
effect to attempt forming any sort of judgment 
of it. The most absent-minded pretense of heed 
or assent usually quite suits him. (And unfor- 
tunately, many people go through life but little 
better socialized in this respect.) For develop- 
ing and socializing this crude activity of chil- 
dren, we find most valuable forces, first, in their 
curiosity in exploring their surroundings, and 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

second, in their equally keen interest in the live 
account of other people's experiences, which 
they get at second-hand through oral or written 
accounts. Both these sources may suggest in- 
numerable projects for speech and writing. But, 
what is more important, a child's absorption in 
accounts of others' experience can be skillfully 
moulded into truly cooperative work among the 
children of a group with vigorous but good- 
spirited criticism of one another's results.^ 

Good Subjects must come from Vital, 
Realized Experience 

Where children say things without any idea 
of what they mean, — often for the mere taste 
of the words, as in repeating nonsense-rhymes, 
— we evidently do not have composition — the 
child's own presentation of his own ideas. Yet, 
because we have not always realized that true 
and living experience is the best source of expres- 
sible ideas, we have too often in school classes 
got nothing better than acceptable repetition 
of phrases. We know well enough in theory that 
only realized or "concrete" ideas — "effective" 

* The relation between the idea of social education and the 
teaching of composition is best presented in Dr. Dewey's The 
School and Society, (ist ed.) pp. 65 ff. 

2 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

as opposed to ''formal" knowledge, as Mr. Cam- 
pagnac puts it ^ — can generate valuable and 
individual expression. We may well note also, 
what investigations have specially emphasized,^ 
that the major interests for a child are happen- 
ings full either of action or of interest in "per- 
sons" — first, in the child himself and next, in 
the animals and humans about him. But we 
have too often failed to view this matter alto- 
gether from the point of view of the child himself; 
we have determined what ideas he should have 
and have assigned him those; and so our com- 
position materials have again and again been 
hopelessly abstract and futile. 

For example, many a grade class in making a 
trip to the fire house have taken down reli- 
giously all that the chief told them of the number 
of men in the department, the amount of their 
salaries deducted for pensions, and the like, and 
have copied it cheerfully into themes — to the 
neglect, in the space they could give to the sub- 
ject, of what they had themselves observed and 

1 The Teaching of Composition, p. lo; cf . also Dewey's How 
We Think, pp. 135 f,, and Dr. Bachman's articles in the Ele- 
mentary School Journal, May- June, 1915 (vol. xv, pp. 491 and 

529)- 

2 Barnes's Studies in Education, vol. i, pp. 15 and 203; 
Child-Study Monthly, vol. 11, pp. 152-67; etc. 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

realized and could express in their own way: 
how the men get dressed and down the poles, 
how the horses are petted and how they respond 
to an alarm, or how to ring in an alarm from the 
corner box. Their usual restatement of quite life- 
less facts is in no real sense composition work. 

It is clear that a child need not actually have 
set his eyes and fingers on a thing to realize it; 
it may be born alive of his own vigorous fancy, 
or he may have imagined it in following some 
one else's vivid account. Children do gain this 
enlargement of experience very early; in the first 
grade, they often study primitive life, and really 
feel themselves a part of it with their attempts 
to build hut and sledge and find sources of food- 
supply.^ So far as their study of history and 
geography is thus real, it may provide excellent 
subject-matter and vigorous incentive to ex- 
pression. But wherever school subjects present 
flat, indigestible facts, to be merely gathered and 
stored in memory, whatever the practical values 
of these as information or as materials for or- 
ganization study, it appears certain that we 
ought to keep altogether clear of them as sub- 
jects for compositions. 

1 For example, Teachers College Elementary School Course, 
Grades i and 2. • ^ 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

Good Subjects must lead naturally to 
Expression in Words 

It is to be noted, further, that many ideas 
which a child quite thoroughly reahzes and is 
deeply interested in may nevertheless arouse 
no impulse toward verbal expression. Thus, 
nothing should be called for in speech or in writ- 
ing which naturally demands no expression, or 
which can be better expressed in some other 
way. In the early grades, certainly, subjects 
without action — descriptions of things, places, 
people not doing something — can be best han- 
dled in drawing or modeling, or else let alone; 
at least below the high school, subjects expres- 
sible in time order are probably always prefer- 
able. Again, we may well hold to the sound 
idea, formulated by Mr. Chubb, ^ that children 
should talk and ''write about things seen, rather 
than felt." There are unquestionably many 
deep impressions, from pictures such as the Sis- 
tine Madonna or the Song of the Lark, for in- 
stance, or from stories with an ideal not baldly 
stated but illustrated well, which we had bet- 
ter not analyze and force to expression. That 
children by preference express objective mat- 
^ ^ Teaching of English, p. 184. 

5 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

ters when unhampered with requirements is sug- 
gested by such studies as that of Miss Vostrow- 
sky.^ 

A, FOUR TYPES OF CHILD -ACTIVITY AS 
SOURCES OF SUBJECT-MATTER 

Good subjects, then, vv^e may define as such 
vital reaHzed experiences of the child's own as 
naturally call for verbal expression — not for 
drawing or pantomiming or simply for quiet, 
undisturbed growth. And such subjects are 
numberless in any child's life day by day. If 
we examine briefly the commonest types of 
child-interest and activity, we may discover 
what children most naturally talk or write about 
in school or outside it. A suggestive grouping 
about centers of typical interest is worked out in 
the University School at Columbia, Missouri; ^ 
these are (i) hearing or reading stories; (2) plays 
and games; (3) construction or handwork; and 
(4) careful observation of human and other ac- 
tivities or their realization from other people's 
accounts. Each of these interests provides a 
great deal of material for expression. 

1 "Children's Stories," Barnes, Studies in Education, vol. 

1} P- 15- 

* Dewey, Schools of To-morrow, chap. iil. 

6 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

Most obviously, his acquaintance with stories 
may suggest to the child the great funds of im- 
aginative material at his own command. Thus 
is developed his fanciful elf-nature. And stories 
are not handled to the best end if they do not 
also help make him see the common things all 
about him as more truly interesting than before 
— full of mysteries, and of people just as worth 
while, once you know them, as prince or starve- 
ling of fairy books. Through his stories the child 
thus becomes a citizen of two worlds, the very 
real one of tales and the freshly mystic and 
strange one just around him. These story in- 
fluences exhibit themselves in his play at dolls 
or pirates — indeed, throughout his reactions 
toward people and events; and they are sources 
of many subjects and of motives to expression. 

The second and the third typical interests to 
be noted are children's zeal in games and in 
handwork and construction of many sorts. In- 
cidents from play and the like fascinating activi- 
ties appear to be the subject of subjects for chil- 
dren's talk. The methods of both games and 
handwork also interest children in proportion 
as they attempt more organized projects, and 
are the source of endless comment and discus- 
sion. If the school but gives occasion for these 

7 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

vivid and living interests to express themselves, 
we may. here gain a starting-ground of free and 
vigorous expression upon which to develop com- 
position power. 

The fourth type of child-activity to be con- 
sidered begins with observing the activities of 
home and community and such nature processes 
as the ways of birds and insects. We may first 
encourage children to watch carefully the lay- 
ing of asphalt pavements or the digging of cel- 
lars and to discuss and come to understand it 
in class. Group and individual expeditions for 
these purposes are likewise valuable, provided 
only the child does not simply repeat what he 
is told by workmen and others, but succeeds in 
relating in his own way what he has understood. 

The Problem of digesting New Experi- ] 

ENCES AT SeCOND-HaND 

There soon appears the problem of helping 
children handle matters which they cannot them- 
selves observe, but which they must come to 
know about if we would get them beyond the 
circle of their small immediate horizon. How 
are we to help them realize and express in their 
own way — not by unmeaningly parroting some 
one else — such things as they can learn about 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

only through hearing or reading of them? To 
insure that the child manages the necessary di- 
gestion of such experiences, we may need to 
help him gain three desirable ends: (i) concrete 
basing of his subject-matter upon what he al- 
ready fully realizes; (2) the fullest accuracy in 
crediting new ideas to their sources; and (3) 
adaptation of his expression to his actual au- 
dience, thus securing its reality to them. These 
are obviously requirements for handling new 
materials of direct sense-perception also; but 
they are the most fully essential, and at the 
same time are more difhcult to secure, when 
the subject is learned about indirectly. 

(i) Through fusion of new with old ideas 

This point is merely the usual necessary coun- 
sel that the child be helped always to realize new 
experiences by fusing them with .the old. First 
of all it is apparently well to use as school-com- 
position subjects, in far greater proportion than 
we usually have done, what the child can set his 
own eyes and fingers upon and learn all about 
unaided by any one else's explanation; this 
should form the sound base for all later excur- 
sions. And then, as early as possible, we may 
well insist that the sources from which a child 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

draws all his composition material — particu- 
larly where one of these sources is another per- 
son's account — shall be in ail cases more than 
one. We all realize that a child's recitation from 
his book of information about river deltas is 
many times as vivid if he builds it about an ac- 
count of applying that information in looking 
for deltas in streams or making them in gutter- 
ways near by. But we may gain almost the same 
end by studying several accounts of any matter, 
adding probably the help of pictures, and mak- 
ing the recitation or theme a composite report 
of these sources. The more this simple principle 
of comprehending new ideas by linking and fus- 
ing them invariably with old ones is applied 
to composition subject-matter, the better we 
shall probably get on; it appears to be the first 
principle of success, particularly in composi- 
tions based on what one reads or hears about 
merely. 

The purpose of this counsel is simply that a 
child's expression may be helped to remain al- 
ways his own — the story his story, an out- 
growth of his individual experience, which can- 
not be Kke that of any one else. We may test 
the value of any composition by the query: 
Does the child express his idea in a way to show 

10 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

the action of his own sense and mind upon it? 
This is sometimes difficult to determine, to be 
sure, since children naturally use the wording 
of their source of information; and this is right 
and useful, provided only their account is not 
mere lifeless copy from talk or book. Yet we 
can know well enough, provided we really know 
the child himself. Does he speak with natural 
vivacity of face and gesture? Is the healthy 
crudity of his blunt and inexact child-mind — his 
raw expression, and the staled phrasings he has 
borrowed here or there — often incongruously 
mixed with the finer and more precise wording 
he has just adopted? If so, the chance is that 
he has recast and fused what he has newly 
learned with previous experience, and so made 
it quite his own. A boy writing a story of Brad- 
dock's conference with Washington expressed 
thus the general's contempt of the colonial tac- 
tics: "^Not on your life; gentlemen don't fight 
like that,' cried General Braddock." The boy 
had the idea clearly in mind, and that is the 
prime requisite. At the same time, then, that 
we plan to help him sharpen his tools for finer 
or more exact statement, we may well be glad 
of this very rawness and crudity of his expres- 
sion; for he has made a gain impossible to the 
II 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

child who merely reflects the information he 
gets, with painful accuracy, from a bright, hard 
surface of mind. 

(2) Through proper crediting 0} sources 

In aid of this principle, wherever the chil- 
dren's accounts are in any part built on some 
one else's observation — whether in stories 
from local history, or industrial processes, or 
experiences from a wider environment — it is 
essential always, both in oral and written themes, 
that they credit as acurately as they can the 
source of their statements. A child may say, for 
example, *'This is what old Mr. Jones told me 
about when there were Indians all around here"; 
or, "I found this in So-and-so's Geography on 
page 10." By thus making quite unmistakable 
the sources of facts or opinions he cites, a child 
can make possible for himself and for his readers 
the fair rating of new ideas. And it is only as 
they learn early to tell in this simple way where 
they get what they have not directly perceived, 
beginning with their simple story reproductions 
and recitations about other new experiences, 
that children can establish the basis for habits 
of accuracy and honesty in thinking. 



12 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

The need of testing statements 
Children may also come, by this route of exam- 
ining and noting who said this or that, to under- 
stand and develop the scientific doubt which 
is essential to real training in thought. They 
will be spurred by other pupils' challenge to 
examine more carefully the bases of fact state- 
ments they have heard or read; and particularly 
they will, by countless such jolts, be assured 
both of the difference between observed facts 
and mere opinions and of the meager value of 
all opinions which are not backed with so much 
specific statement of concrete instances as makes 
conclusion from it safe. When a child insists 
that killing spiders brings rain and is scoffed at 
by his companions, we may help him to dis- 
cover, through his effort to back his opinion, that 
much more than the authority and the chance 
instances he has been accepting must be secured 
as foundation for any solid belief. Thus, through 
investigating and experimenting, he may catch 
the first glimmer of a scientific habit of mind. 

(j) Through adaptation of expression to one^s 

audience 
^As a third point in helping children to diges- 
tion of new experience, we must lead the class 

13 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

to demand always that each child adapt what 
he presents specifically to their understanding. 
Indeed, growth in the art of writing or speaking 
may be defined simply as a process of becom- 
ing increasingly *' reader-minded " — able, that is, 
to test one's own expression for its actual clear- 
ness and force to those he intends it for. The 
child must make his account real to the class 
by basing it altogether in their knowledge and 
experience. Thus he may not be permitted new 
technical terms which a bricklayer, for instance, 
has told him — hod or mortar and the like — 
without making clear to his audience just what 
these things are. In most composition work I 
have seen, not nearly enough is made of this, 
the crux and central principle of a social teach- 
ing of composition. 

In view of the wide range of composition sub- 
ject-matter that, we have noted, may be gen- 
erated by children's interest in stories, play, 
hand-work, and observation, there seems to 
be no justification for assigning as composition 
subjects — whatever their importance in other 
school work — sterile, dry matter that does not 
represent to the children realized and vital 
experience. We have noted that realization 

14 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

is the fundamental test for both selection and 
presentation of material; we must in all ways 
help children, especially in handling ideas they 
get at second-hand, to the use and fusion of 
several sources of information, proper crediting 
of sources, and most of all, true adaptation of 
what they present to their audience, so that it 
becomes actual reality to them also. Thus we 
can hope to develop in children, first, power of 
distinguishing, in what they hear and read, be- 
tween statements of fact and statements of 
opinion; and second, some true sense of their 
respective values. 

B. VITAL MOTIVES AND PROJECTS 
FOR COMPOSITION 

We are next concerned with the definite mo- 
tives and the specific composition projects 
which may be developed out of these natural 
activities of children. There appears to be no 
need of guiding them toward a formal differen- 
tiation of their motives in attempting various 
problems. But usually, in fact, they respond to 
incentives which we may for our own conven- 
ience classify as of three types — projects more 
or less vaguely defined which they think it worth 
while to carry out. We may call these the 

IS 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

"story-teller" motive, the 'teacher" motive, 
and the "community worker" motive — this 
last an interest in good-spirited cooperation 
upon projects suggested by school or other social 
needs. 

I. The Story-Teller or Entertainer 
Motive 

The story-teller motive (by this I of course 
mean the desire to tell stories, as distinguished 
from the interest in hearing them) apparently 
grows from the child's desire to rehearse his 
own exploits and real or fanciful adventures. 
It is pleasant for him to go over, simply for his 
own benefit, the most trivial happening.^ But 
besides this, a child finds that his effective tell- 
ing of a story gives him -standing in his small 
community, whether he celebrates and sings 
himself or tells of other events. The attention 
of the group when he succeeds in making a pic- 
ture live and move before them, their desire, 
perhaps stimulated by the teacher's suggestions, 
for more of specific detail — these may lead him 
to a new and genuine pleasure in holding the 
attention of others and gaining their commen- 
dation. This impulse — not for a long time very 

\ 1 Campagnac, The Teaching cj Composition, p. 20. 
16 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

altruistic, to be sure — has tremendous poten- 
tiality in the composition class. Their demand 
that the speaker make his picture and other 
sense-appeals clear and real experiences, once 
this is developed under skillful direction, stirs 
up an eager desire to transfer his experiences 
and his fancies into just as real ideas for his 
classmates. 

Story types: Real and fanciful adventures 

Simple chronicles of what the child has ac- 
tually seen or done and tales modified or cre- 
ated by his fancy appear to be about equally 
good stimuli to expression; but they appeal to 
different children, or rather to different inter- 
ests in any one child. Provided the stories are 
made real to their audience, they are successful 

— though on ethical grounds it may be better 
to see that the child learns to label rightly his 
fanciful tales. The first-hand experience sub- 
jects may include accounts of home pleasures 

— romps and story-hours and family expedi- 
tions — of vacation and holiday adventures, 
and of good times of the class group. The sub- 
jects will be wisely limited by the teacher's sug- 
gestion and influence to what is wholesome; 
gore and domestic scandal and stories priggish 

17 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

in their account of naughty children or of very 
good ones are perhaps about equally mis- 
chievous. 

The chance to tell stories built with the aid 
of fancy fascinates most normal children; yet a 
teacher's blunt demand for an imaginative story 
may quench this interest for a long time if not 
for good. The imaginary play of children — 
Indians, house, or school — and excursions which 
they take with the heroes of their stories prob- 
ably furnish the chief bulk of subjects. The 
outhne of a story to be filled in with specific 
detail as the children imagine it — the story of 
Faithful Fido, for instance — is one good open- 
ing. Another comes from starting a lively story, 
like that of Merlin's Cave,^ and letting the chil- 
dren finish it to suit themselves. Such a be- 
ginning as, " 'Well, Fred, what makes you so 
late?' asked his mother sharply," or, " 'Now 
you get right out of my kitchen!' cried Aunt 
Dinah," rarely fails in stimulating most original 
and happy response. The meeting of a well- 
known story character in a new place or condi- 
tion, and the party Mother Goose gave for her 
children, or Simple Simon and Jack Horner at 
a fair, are stirring topics. Pictures prove to 
^ In Merry Tales, by Skinner. 
l8 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

be good in proportion as they effectively sug- 
gest a real story-situation. There appears to 
be little or no value in inducing children to de- 
scribe the picture, but the class discussion may 
help them to look in it for hints of interesting 
happenings for their stories. Later, topics of 
this sort may be used with great effect in the 
effort to make history and geography lessons 
dramatically real. The meeting of Benjamin 
Franklin and Mr. Edison on the Styx House- 
Boat, or of fur-traders and Indians, and the 
dramatization of scenes in other lands are good 
examples, provided always the children, usually 
helped by discussion, have first conceived the 
affair as a true experience. 

This is, indeed, the crux of the whole matter, 
particularly in subjects of the children's imagin- 
ing. If these stories are to be more than a con- 
fused jumble and unreal stringing of detail, it 
is evident that they must tie as close to real 
experience as any other subjects given. This 
real experience may be that of other stories; 
but the most successful assignments of this sort 
appear to be those that introduce a mystic or 
fairy element into the child's actual surround- 
ings — "If I had Aladdin's lamp, or the Tarn- 
kappe,^^ for instance. As with children's com- 

19 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

position subjects in general, we may safely as- 
sume that these topics are good in proportion 
as they suggest imagination of concrete mat- 
ters, and as they are kept pretty clear of attempts 
to discuss emotions. 

Class discussion to orient projects 

The success of these projects probably de- 
pends just as much on the way in which they are 
presented as on the subject-matter itself; the 
children must have a real basis for understand- 
ing them, and especially they must be in the 
right spirit for setting out.^ The most effective 
aid in this appears to be the free discussion of 
the subject in class, where many children may 
suggest what they will have happen to start the 
story and perhaps to finish it, and thus give 
useful hints of new departures to those who are 
slower in getting a start. Given the right direc- 
tion by the readiest children, this work need have 
no limit save the possible powers of each child 
enhanced by the inspiration of his fellows, 

^ Cf. Elizabeth Hodgson, "Orientation in English Compo- 
sition," English Journal, April, 19 14 (vol. in, p. 233). 



20 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

The values of these projects: fun, fancy, and 
observation 

The sort of stories whose basis is actual hap- 
penings may, under the urge of social demand, 
stimulate the children to note in some detail 
interesting sights and sounds and odors in pic- 
nics and walks to and from school, and so on, 
to see more color and form and movement, and 
to gather the most possible of characteristic 
human detail, as of how people act in disagree- 
able situations like missing a car. This human 
interest has particularly large values later in 
showing how we actually judge people's charac- 
ter and motive; in particular, it may lead chil- 
dren to avoid meaningless conventional as- 
sumptions based on face or dress merely and 
establish the value of careful observation of 
what people do and say. The impulse to a 
child's happy fancy from specific interesting 
suggestions about imagining people and situa- 
tions, and the direction to socially useful ends 
of the ideas thus aroused, may have just as real 
importance. And whether or not these two in- 
terests are ever developed into highly artistic 
powers, they may, at any rate, cultivate fine 
"habits of harmless enjoyment," and such de- 

21 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

lectable social ends as real appreciation and 
ability in telling simple everyday incidents and 
in writing individual letters. 

2. The Teacher Motive 

The child's interest in telling about what he 
can do or make or what he has seen some one 
else doing is at first no different from the story 
motive. His account of how he made a kite is 
at first but another case of his own achievements 
passed in review. But give him as audience 
somebody who really wants to know about the 
process, and we may transform his conception 
entirely. He must now serve a practical pur- 
pose; a new element has entered into his cal- 
culations. In the case of handwork, the child 
who is an authority on a subject — making a 
cake or playing volley ball — may teach the 
class to do it. A practicable test of success here 
is having the other children actually do the thing. 
For instance, one sixth-grade boy explained the 
process of making a kite — in a vigorous, straight- 
forward way, but without helpful and definite 
detail. The teacher said, "Harry, will you please 
repeat a little more slowly the part about 
putting the sticks together and fastening them; 
and, Ellen, suppose you try holding these three 

22 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

rulers just as Harry tells you." At first Harry 
was a little contemptuous of Ellen's failure at 
this; but the other boys saw the point and were 
eager to clear up the confusion. The teacher 
rightly gave Harry the chance to make his own 
adjustment, and he succeeded in doing it. It is 
through such experiment and betterment, with 
the help of real and practical criticism, that the 
second significant interest in expression comes 
in. We may call it the teacher motive. 

Types of explanation-projects 

This type may lead to quite as many impor- 
tant subjects as the story-teller motive. It 
draws its material not alone from the children's 
interest in games and handwork, but also from the 
whole range of subjects which they learn about 
both through direct observation and through 
experience at second-hand, from book or lecture 
or picture.-^ For examples we may note many 
practical assignments like letting children give 
directions for games and exercises which the 
class are to go through. From their very re- 
quirement of practicability, these are more diffi- 
cult to do well than stories, but I have known 
of their excellent development even in kinder- 
» See p. 8. 

23 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

garten. It is necessary to start with simple ones 
— playing keep-away with bean bags, telling 
riddles or puzzles, or directing dramatizations 
like that of The Wind and the Sun. These pro- 
ceed to devising games for number work and 
language drills and planning special exercises 
for occasions like Halloween — all of them pro- 
jects requiring very clear explanation. In high 
school the children may come to explanation 
of complex and difficult games like baseball for 
those who want to understand it and don't. 
The type should include also investigation and 
report on all sorts of things that the children 
care to know about; the wash- wringer or the 
ice-cream freezer at home becomes deeply in- 
teresting to most children if the mystery of its 
working is well suggested to them. And these 
simple mechanical principles, thus worked out 
and explained by the children to whom they 
appeal, will form a basis for such later investi- 
gations of the working of industries as have been 
suggested. 

The teacher type of theme subjects includes 
other matters of explanation, such as clarifying 
the meaning of difficult sentences in textbooks 
and other reading, explaining old proverbs and 
maxims by illustration from the children's own 
24 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

experience, and the like.^ Where they can do 
their own interpreting and perform the func- 
tions of critic and teacher for one another, a 
healthy stimulation of the spirit of research is 
induced that should carry young people deep 
enough into any difficulty. 

Values of the explanation-projects 

The purpose of this whole type of subjects 
and problems we have grouped under the teacher 
motive is to give one's audience useful ideas; 
these must, therefore, be made utterly clear 
before everything else. Through this require- 
ment enters the necessity for more definite and 
perfectly exact details, as in the case of the boy 
who explained making a kite; and as we shall 
see later ,2 these have somewhat different re- 
quirements as to beginnings, organization, and 
the like. Just so far as the child has done or ob- 
served interesting things that he thinks he can 
make practically clear to his classmates, these 
themes have a very solid hold on his interest. 

3. The "Community- Worker" Motive 

But this t3^e of motive, good as it is, is hardly 
so socially valuable as the sort of projects, read- 
* , Cf . pp. 13 and 28. 2 Chap, in^ 

25 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

ily initiated in a social class, which demand the 
common action of the group for carr^^ing them 
out. These require of the child the utmost in 
effective expression to make clear the details 
of a plan which he has worked on because he 
considers it important to the group and which 
he presents to them for judgment. His project, 
to be successful, must command the sympathetic 
understanding of his "age-fellows" and enlist 
cooperation. The sort of subjects with this key- 
motive we may call the "community-worker'* 
topics. They grow out of the observation, dis- 
cussions, and activities that center around group 
or neighborhood needs. 

Types of projects in meeting social needs 

The community worker finds plenty of com- 
position projects to keep him busy in aiding the 
smooth running of his school and wider neigh- 
borhood. He may usually begin in the most 
immediate environment with noting how to 
make the schoolroom and yard attractive places 
to work and play in. Many teachers arrange 
to let the children write necessary letters, — 
requests, orders, and so on, — and see to the 
school or branch public library, checking up 
books and getting and returning them. This 
26 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

may call, too, for reports and plans; the pupil 
librarians may tell about the sort of books most 
read and make recommendations, or gather 
opinions from children and from outsiders and 
discuss them. 

This may extend almost automatically — as 
in the IndianapoKs and Chicago schools, for 
example,^ to examination of the neighborhood 
and formation of projects for vacant-lot gar- 
dening, cleaning up alleys, and innumerable 
other improvements. One grade class worked 
out quite a complete investigation of the ex- 
penses and dangers of scattering paper, refuse, 
and glass about the parks after picnics. And 
there are other manifestations of good social 
spirit, such as the Boy Scouts demand, which 
can well be taken account of in composition 
classes and illustrated by stories and incidents. 
All these subjects arise spontaneously enough, 
in a socialized classroom, from the ideas which 
flood upon the child. Thus he learns to be ob- 
serving and to form his own conclusions about 
needs and injustices, because he discovers that his 
teacher and his classmates listen eagerly to what 
he finds absorbingly important to talk about. 

1 "Schools of To-morrow," pp. 93 /. and 97; Bulletin of 
U.S. Bureau of Education, No. 642. 

27 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

Values of community-worker projects 

All this should be of the greatest value. To 
get the cooperation of his class group and of 
other people in solving the problems he attempts, 
a child must explain very clearly the facts he 
has noted which have led him to desire some- 
thing done, and he must present them so vividly 
as to win assent and action. He must also be 
able to work with others and value their con- 
tributions. The projects of the community 
worker thus use the thinking of the children and 
their powers of expression to meet actual social 
problems. In connection with the study of 
local and wider civics later, this furnishes mate- 
rial for the most lively sort of discussion and 
debate and for the formation of ideals. 

The Presentation of Opinions 

One further point seems worth noticing here; 
we might, indeed, differentiate a fourth type 
of motive to expression if it did not overlap and 
include much of the last two we have been con- 
sidering. A great deal of what the child has to 
explain or discuss from his interests both as 
teacher and as community worker is not state- 
ment of observed facts, but presentation of his 
28 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

original opinions or of opinions he has seen rea- 
son to adopt. All that we as teachers need do 
here is to help him and his friends toward see- 
ing just where opinions enter. They need to 
know that these are not facts, but their indivi- 
dual conclusions, and that the why — the fact 
details they have observed — is the interesting 
and important matter in these regions. A 
child^s presentation of opinions is often merely 
explanation of his position — making it quite 
clear. Whenever, in interpreting a sentence 
that has caused difficulty, or in giving his rea- 
sons for liking a favorite game, he meets with 
differences of opinion, explanation automatically 
becomes argument. However, the sole new fac- 
tor thus introduced is a desirable sharpening 
of motive for hunting out more fully concrete 
detail; in procedure there appears to be no 
essential difference so far as the child may be 
expected to see. It is rather the distinction be- 
tween such facts as he can observe or collect on 
good authority, on the one hand, and his own 
or anybody else's opinions on the other, that 
appears to be alone fundamental here.^ 

Many good projects in elucidation of opinions 

* Cf. "As to the Forms of Discourse," English Journal, 
April, 1914 (vol. Ill, p. 201). 

29'. 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

suggest themselves: There are explanations of 
familiar proverbs, like ''Don't count your chick- 
ens before they're hatched," with every-day ex- 
amples from the child's own experience. Others 
may arise from candid examination of popular 
superstitions.^ Again, the child may defend his 
explanation of a sentence by citing other hap- 
penings in the story — various revelations of 
Lady Macbeth's or Puss-in-Boots's characters, 
for instance — or his favorite game by a glowing 
account of its values and joys. One amusing 
little girl supported her preference for the Fourth 
of July instead of Thanksgiving by describing 
the prettier dresses one could wear then. Her 
male opponent was annoyed and derisive, but 
the majority, including even some of the boys, 
voted for the joys she had vividly portrayed, 
and the teacher pointed out to her opponent that 
he could have won his case only by a still more 
alluring account of the pleasures of turkey and 
pie. Formal and thorough study of what consti- 
tutes effective argument must come in more adult 
courses designed to teach these things, but chil- 
dren can certainly gain very practical hints on 
the subject in the sturdy give-and-take of a fairly 
umpired social classroom. It is to be hoped that 
" ^ See p. 13. 
30 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

each one will be encouraged to hold his opinions 
stanchly against whatever adverse wind till he is 
given a solid reason for change, and to change 
frankly when he sees good cause for doing so. It 
seems particularly necessary that teachers lead 
always toward discovery of the constant presence 
of opinions in all that the children hear and read, 
and to suggest the ways in which these can best 
be valued and presented. 

Projects that reach beyond the Class ] 
Group 

There remains for discussion one final branch 
of this wide subject of composition motives 
and projects. Topics of any sort which all the 
group have examined and discussed or which 
they all know about do not need or suggest 
further organized expression before the group. 
To expect this or insist upon it, as many teachers 
are tempted to do, cannot but be unnatural 
and deadly. But such subjects may promote 
other excellent projects. Wherever possible, 
there should be discovered occasions for pre- 
senting these matters to other audiences. The 
class projects may be widely varied by themes 
in which the children really imagine themselves 
a body of village councilors, or a band of cru- 

31 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

saders, or anybody whatever, and adapt their 
stories or explanations to these people. Or they 
may actually speak or write to other classes, 
or to their own parents, or to any one who 
may be got to care about their experiences and 
projects, and try to gain interest or assent. 
Sometimes upper classes write fairy stories and 
the like and send or read them to children in a 
lower grade. An informal assembly period in 
which each grade or class present their experi- 
ences in investigation or study is excellent. So 
is a systematic interchange between schools in 
different localities — a help particularly in real- 
ization of geography or history. I know of one 
high-school class who prepared a series of ex- 
hibits, pictures, and diagrams on paper-making, 
a local industry, and a set of themes each pre- 
senting a definite phase of the subject, and sent 
these to a Southern school from which had come 
a request for the information. If the sugges- 
tion had accompanied these that the Southern- 
ers prepare and send a similar account of the 
cotton industry, there would have resulted such 
a complete social interchange as I suggest. 



32 



SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PROJECTS 

Motives for Written Composition 

(a) Preservation of specially good work 

(b) Publication — reaching a wider audience 

Written composition, like the oral work, 
should grow naturally from the conversations 
and discussions of the children. Writing may 
often suggest itself because there is not class 
time for all the children to talk; the proposal 
may then find favor that each one write his 
story. We find that a frequent motive is the 
desire to preserve an idea that pleases the 
child because he has thought it through and 
found it interesting and worth while. More 
socially valuable in its results is the desire, al- 
ready suggested, to reach a wider audience than 
the class — the child's parents, or a sick class- 
mate, or children somewhere else. One phase 
of this is the interest in publication. The school 
paper is a useful outlet for this social impulse, 
and letter-writing is probably its most universal 
and valuable expression.^ 

* Many high-school teachers have found unusual value in 
starting groups of children into experiments in amateur jour- 
nalism. Infonnation as to national associations of amateur 
journalists can be had of Mr. M. W. Moe, Appleton High 
School, Appleton, Wisconsin. 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

Upon the basis of natural child interests and 
activities as sources of composition subjects, 
we have in this chapter seen some of the motives 
which urge children to self-expression: those of 
the story-teller or entertainer, of the teacher, 
and of the community worker. The second and 
the third type frequently include interest in ex- 
plaining or defending opinions by showing the 
facts — actually observable matters — on which 
they are built. All of them may lead to the de- 
lightful possibilities of talking and writing for 
other audiences than the social class group, and 
thus are found still more new and fascinating 
motives. The possibilities of this sort, both real 
and imaginary, are so numerous that there 
should be little reason for working overmuch 
in one type, with resultant narrowed interests 
and limited expressional development. And there 
seems even less excuse for themes brutally de- 
manded, or for ill-tasting assignments covered 
with a transparent syrup of assumed motive. 



II 



THE SOCIAL GROUP AS AN AGENT IN 
EXPRESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 't is the school- 
boys who educate him. 

Emerson, Culture in Education. 

So soon as a child has an experience or a prob- 
lem that absorbs his attention, we all have noted 
how eagerly he proceeds to crude, enthusiastic 
attempts at expression. And in the interests 
that thus arise we have discovered many mo- 
tives which, in their possibilities at least, are 
truly social. But, even given these impelling in- 
terests, his powers of expression are as yet quite 
unsocialized. His observation, though quick, 
is inaccurate and wavering, and his power of 
organizing and stating his ideas naturally trails 
considerably behind that. Moreover, he has, 
as we have noticed, little if any judgment of 
the effects he actually secures and no idea of how 
he can gain better ones. We come, then, to the 
central problem of this study: How, stirred by 
such interesting problems requiring expression, 
can the school class be knit into a social group 

35 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

organized for mutual help, and aided to move 
steadily forward in the arduous way of attain- 
ing effective expression? 

The Motive Force toward Cooperative 
Work 

It has already been suggested ^ that we shall 
attempt to use for this purpose a third motive 
force, in addition to the interests already dis- 
cussed, first, in expression itself, and second, in 
varied exploration and adventure. This force is 
the children's interest in other people's accounts 
of worth-while experience. The present chapter 
presents a discussion of how we may transform 
children's naive pleasure in what is told them 
into a truly valuable creative and cooperative 
interest in making one another's stories the best 
possible. We shall then be able to seek the most 
practicable method by which the social response 
of such a class group, as cooper ators and audi- 
ence, may be brought to bear in helping chil- 
dren carry out their projects to the best advan- 
tage and develop true composition power. 
1 Chap. I, p. 2. 



36 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 



Two Stages in Evolving a Social Class 
Group 

(i) Free and Unstudied Talk \ 
(2) Prepared Compositions 

In considering this development there have 
appeared to be two convenient stages: ^ The 
first is unstudied and free conversation, whose 
ideal is simply encouraging freedom of expres- 
sion and interchange of experience. This is not 
generally composition, but it is an essential 
preliminary. The second is prepared compositions, 
whether oral or written, made ready for a defi- 
nite, but in most cases quite informal, purpose, 
and to be judged by the class as a cooperative 
group of keen but good-spirited critics. Because 
confusion of these two stages has sometimes had 
the double bad effect of formalizing and con- 
straining the unstudied group conversation and, 
on the other hand, of permitting slip-shod effort 
to pass where only prepared and careful work 
should, it seems worth while to differentiate the 
two as sharply as possible. 

^ This division is suggested by Miss Mary B. Fontaine, Su- 
pervisor of English, in her Course of Study in English jor the 
Charleston, W.Va., Public Schools, 1916 (p. 4). 

37 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

The spirit and values of free discussion 

First, then, as to informal talk in the class- 
room. The initial v/ork in any class, whether 
in grades or high school, should probably in 
all cases be free discussion of real human in- 
terests — small happenings on circus day and 
the like. This is pleasantly started in kinder- 
gartens in the "morning circle" talk. Its suc- 
cess must, of course, depend almost wholly on 
the power of suggestion and the fine spirit of 
the teacher. 

As a recent writer says of the kindergartner, 
such a teacher must "resemble the tactful hos- 
tess guiding the conversation into desirable 
channels. She must ignore the unimportant and 
undesirable contributions and select for em- 
phasis such remarks as will best serve the group. 
She must value each contribution for its indi- 
vidual effort. . . . Thus is developed courteous 
attention and ability to share experience." ^ 
Campagnac discusses inimitably the idea of 
such conversation, where children are per- 
mitted, not required, to talk, and where the 
teacher, if he holds off properly and otherwise 

1 Minnetta Sammis, "The Kindergarten as a Socializing 
Agency," Western Journal of Education, April, 191 2. 

38 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

shows himself socially desirable, may be ap- 
pealed to and asked to talk also.^ 

This quite unstudied conversation has such 
great value that it should, I believe, have its 
place much further on in the school grades than 
it generally does. It is Hke the sort of recitation 
which Dewey calls "a social clearing-house/' It 
helps to discover many new interests, and gives 
the teacher a definite idea not otherwise obtain- 
able of the children's individualities and en- 
vironment. Perhaps most valuable of all, it 
helps to bring a social spirit into the class — a 
freedom and spontaneity without which com- 
position work as we are here considering it can- 
not possibly be carried on. 

Its direction and criticism 

For furthering natural talk among the chil- 
dren, the teacher may be aided by some read- 
justment of the classroom organization. We 
readily see why small groups can better join in 
friendly talk than can large classes. Again, 
where the pupils sit so that each sees everybody 
else and the speaker does not have the horrid 
necessity of addressing backs of heads, good 
conversation is much more natural and possible. 

1 The Teaching of Composition, pp. 31-33. 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

Our present classrooms are designed chiefly for 
securing a maximum of order and dispatch. 
ParHamentary practice is demanded in the cus- 
tom of addressing the teacher always, and is 
parodied in the waving of right hands for recog- 
nition. Such a formal arrangement is better 
fitted to the recitation of assigned topics or to 
the giving of prepared themes; it is doubtful 
whether such seating and method can be made 
to secure the most possible of the union and 
cordiality of spirit particularly essential to this 
conversation type of language study. Wherever 
possible, then, the seating should be rearranged 
when we wish to have conversation — best with 
a small number of children at a time grouped, 
perhaps, in a circle or semicircle. Where this 
is impossible, they had all better squirm into 
position for seeing one another when they talk, 
and each should thus so far as possible feel that 
he is addressing his mates rather than talking 
for or to the teacher. 

In the primary grades, particularly, such free 
discussion may well comprise a major part of 
the composition work proper.^ But unlimited 

1 Story reproduction, presentation of plays written by some 
one else, and exact recitation of matter from texts, we all, of 
course, recognize as necessary; but as these do not appear to be 

40 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

and rather formless talk is, of course, only a be- 
ginning of the way. From the start, we may 
work toward holding ever more closely to a 
definite subject of conversation, selected fre- 
quently by the children, and trying to bring out 
as many interests as possible in connection with 
this. The teacher may well have increasingly 
definite purposes and guide the conversation 
skillfully in ways he regards as desirable. Thus, 
in our free play of conversation we begin at 
once to introduce some simple principles of 
organized and effective speech, especially that 
of an unfettering limitation and holding to a 
subject. 2 

The question of corrections in conversation 
We must consider here a further point — the 
advisability of corrections at this stage of the 
work. We find the speech habits of children 
many times fearful and painful. And there may 
perhaps be place, even in our free conversation, 

composition in the sense of this study, — the child's own organ- 
ization and expression of his individual experience, — it has 
seemed well to discuss these separately with other topics — 
word-study and sentence-structure and the necessary drills — 
that are parallel and contributory to composition work proper. 
(Cf. chap. IV.) 
2 Cf. chap, m, pp. 68,/. 

41 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

for correction of a very few of the worst mis- 
takes in the kindly, incidental fashion of the 
kindergartner — "We say it this way." Best of 
all, the teacher who wants to prepare a clear 
plan of campaign will, in these days of getting 
acquainted, set about tabulating the most fla- 
grant errors of speech and deciding where to 
begin organized attack. But, as we shall see 
later, ^ the effective work we do in bettering ex- 
pressional habits will be done chiefly through 
definite study toward good habits in special 
periods for the purpose. In our conversations 
we may well leave these matters largely if not 
altogether alone. It is only as we get sponta- 
neous and unstudied talking first that we can 
hope to do effective work toward raising stan- 
dards later. 

The transition to prepared composition 

Very early in such conversations as we have 
discussed, there usually appear brief incidents 
— perhaps two or three sentences only — which 
first show possibilities of evolution into work of 
the second type — prepared compositions. Form- 
less as they generally are, the teacher may well 
help the children toward making a crude evalua- 
* Chap. IV. 

42 



FUNCTIONS OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

tion of these. It is first important to see that 
the critics offer hearty commendation of what- 
ever shows real effort. But to be of most use, 
this appreciation should be accompanied by 
suggestions of how to make the story more live 
and effective. Thus, the class may praise as 
interesting a bald statement or two about a 
spaniel's retrieving; but they may ask also for 
further matters of interest, as, what sort of dog 
he was, and how far he swam. A beginning is 
thus made at right evaluation of a story of 
good details that have been observed — actual 
sense-experience. 

Three Processes of Organized 
Composition 

Among these criticisms in the impromptu 
class talks, there may presently (in grade three 
or four, I think, at the earhest) come the pro- 
posal, perhaps from the children themselves, 
that they each look about and tell next day 
something that they have noticed. This, rightly 
met, may be made the basis for actually intro- 
ducing the second, entirely different sort of com- 
position work: themes got ready by thoughtful 
prevision for carrying out a specific project. 
Now, in the development of themes or corn- 

43 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

positions proper, there may be noted three im- 
portant processes in which all the class take 
part: The first is thorough preliminary discus- 
sion ; this should lead to careful planning of his 
work by each child. The second, following the 
child's presentation of an oral or written theme, 
is criticism by all the class of each one's work 
to show its values and to suggest how it could 
be better done. These are simply more defmite 
developments of the free conversations. The 
third is a systematic campaign of study, based 
upon these, to achieve better organization and 
clearer, liner, and more vigorous modes of ex- 
pression. 

First, group canvass of ways and means 

The proposal that each child prepare a small 
story to tell next day may therefore be consid- 
ered crucial and dramatic, as Mr. Bennett 
would say. It is first of all to be promptly 
cmi)hasized as an excellent and valuable sug- 
gestion; and from this, the class may proceed 
at once to the first stage of organized theme 
work, class discussion of the project and of 
serviceable ways and means. First may come 
specific suggestions of subjects to be presented, 
as that they all tell next time of some trick of 

44 



FUNCTIONS OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

a favorite pet, or the like. And in particular it 
should be brought out most clearly that each 
one had better tell of only one thing about his 
pet, not more, — so as to have room in the time 
the class can fairly allow him for details that 
will make the story real, just as in the case of 
the dog's retrieving.^ Such limitation, informally 
suggested, is, I beheve, the basis of prevision 
study — the first step in the long way of help- 
ing children to organization of ideas.^ All this 
preliminary canvassing which we have noted 
makes a pleasantly simple sort of assignment, 
initiated so far as possible by the children them- 
selves and guided by their enthusiastic sugges- 
tions of what they each will talk about. 

The presentation of prepared themes 

The result next day should be small, roughly 
planned bits of narrative, fairly distinct from 
the artless and unpremeditated babble that we 
have mainly had thus far. Such planned stories 
are very like the drawings which children make 
after their preliminary crude attempts at a prob- 

^ Well discussed in Speaking and Writing English: A Course 
for the Lawrence, Mass., Elementary Schools, by Superintendent 
B. M. Sheridan, pp. 19-22. 

2 Chap. Ill, pp. 68 /. 

45 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

lem have led to the counsel that they notice 
more closely and try again. ^ There should, that 
is, be more sticking to the point the child has 
chosen, less fumbling, and possibly somewhat 
more true and clear expression. To emphasize 
the added importance of the occasion, we may 
suggest that each one tell his story from the 
front of the room, just as the teacher does, and 
that he also wait afterward to hear how the rest 
like what he has given. Since this is a position 
the child has taken before in retelling stories he 
has read, it need not embarrass him. We may 
encourage him, too, to be deliberate and unhur- 
ried, not to spoil everything by scramble. 

But we should guard particularly against the 
danger of damping the spontaneity and joyous- 
ness in expression that we have so far taken care 
to foster. The timorous may be encouraged by 
good example. Most important of all, every 
one should be clearly shown that he faces no 
pecking or chilly critical spirit, but has the help- 
ful and sympathetic interest of his audience. 
And there should surely be expected and per- 
mitted quite everyday and childlike ways of say- 
ing things, checked by no demand of for7nality. 
Under these conditions only can these prepared 

^ Dewey, The School and Society (ist ed.), pp. 57-59- 

46 



FUNCTIONS OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

themes be, as they should, quite as delightful 
and spontaneous as the previous talks — but 
better because they are results of forethought. 

It seems essential that the child have hJs 
chance undisturbed by any interruption till he 
has finished what he has to say. And it is usu- 
ally an excellent idea for him to give first, if he 
likes, his own criticism of what he has done. 
This often comes most spontaneously; more 
than one boy has thrown down his notes and 
cried, "Please let me do this another time; I 
haven't it ready." Because he was failing to 
hold his audience, he has discovered the neces- 
sity for thoughtful organization.^ 

Second, the initiation of class criticism 

After the child has given his theme and per- 
haps his own criticism, we may initiate the sec- 
ond process, the attempt at specific evaluation 
of his work by all his classmates. The one who 
has told a story may remain before the class, 
those who have a point to make perhaps stand, 
and the speaker calls on them; they thus talk 
to him instead of discussing him in a discon- 
certing fashion. The teacher is moderator or 

^ Told by Miss Lally, of the Chicago University Elemen- 
tary School. 

47 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

umpire; but he is at best one of the group and 
a good-spirited helper. He can make himself 
less prominent and schoolmasterish by sitting 
at the back of the room, perhaps having one of 
the class as chairman to call the speakers and 
keep order. 

It is of the greatest importance that the class 
be really left free to make the evaluation of one 
another's work themselves. We grown people find 
it difficult to realize that children's thinking 
and expression cannot be fairly judged by our 
more mature standards. Their way is a way 
of formlessness, of scattering interest in large 
wholes and irrelevant details, and absence of 
clear discriminations and relations. Only ex- 
pression that is in a measure inexact and rough 
really can represent a child's own effort,^ and 
so such expression alone is of value. Must we 
not, therefore, first discover what is the child's 
manner of thinking and speaking, and what he 
admires, as revealed in the class judgment? 
And then, appreciating the individual value of 
his best statement of an experience, as well as 
the need of making it more social and effective, 
we can work in sympathy and patience to help 
him see more fully and finely, think in more 
* Cf. pp. lo-ii. 

48 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

keen relation, and master the tools and forms 
for adequately communicating his growing 
thoughts. ^ 

Hence, really studying the natural class criti- 
cism of a child's effect and then helping to en- 
lighten and ripen that judgment probably repre- 
sents our wisest course. For after all, the whole 
matter of more effective expression can be im- 
portant only in relation to its social function- 
ing. If we are to achieve real improvement, it 
seems clear that a child must always realize first, 
through the class discussion, that he has lost or 
weakened his effect through unprepared, thought- 
less work, or unsocial forms, or lack of clearness 
and vigor in his expression. He will best come 
in this way to appreciate what he needs to work 
for. 

The spirit and the purpose of class criticism 

The spirit and the purpose of this class evalu- 
ation are altogether determinative of its effect. 
The attitude in criticism which we should seek 
to cultivate, by both example and suggestion, 
is that of hearty cooperation by all the group 
in a creative interest in the story — ■ an eager 
desire, that is, to make it most true and real 
and thus share in its pleasant experience, rather 

49 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

than to tear it down so that one's ov/n story 
may show forth more resplendent. The teacher 
certainly, and so far as possible the children, 
must come to realize, as McMurry has it, that 
when a child "works carefully with a genuine 
purpose, the result is excellent, no matter w^hat 
the critic may think." ^ Real improvement in 
any particular demands especially ready and 
hearty commending. Only in so far as this 
spirit obtains can the social teaching of com- 
position become a reality. 

But the important end of this class discus- 
sion is to develop principles of criticism; only 
as we secure thoughtful basing of the children's 
evaluations can we hope to avoid the random, 
fowl-like pecking at small verbal infehcities 
which George Meredith ascribes to the pedant, 
and really accompHsh effective study of our 
problems. So far as possible we may allow the 
pupils to think out reasons for their own judg- 
ments by asking them to tell always why they 
commend one way or suggest another, and to 
answer and discuss such opinions freely. Under 
the teacher's unobtrusive guidance they should 
in particular be helped to test story or explana- 
tion by asking: Did we see his pictures, so that 

1 Charles McMurry, Special Method in Language, p. 44. 
50 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

we felt as if we had been there? or, Can we actu- 
ally succeed in doing what he told us in the ex- 
planation? 

Suggestions as to details and organization 

The class may naturally be interested first 
in the vividness and interest of the details pre- 
sented. The teacher's care will be to see that 
there is frank and hearty commendation of what 
is worth while in this. The critics may further 
request more of the same sort, and make specific 
suggestions of what they think would be inter- 
esting. There may be particular note, too, of 
good organization — of the child's having sens- 
ibly limited himself to one point, for example — 
and criticism of fumbling and forgetting. Since 
the child has had time to think first, we should 
also certainly expect a minimum of repeating 
and wandering and the like. If he leaves the 
story proper through not having thoroughly and 
definitely hmited it, — as when he fails to com- 
plete the account of his dog's retrieving in order 
to tell of other tricks and adventures, — the class 
criticism should enforce and give point to the 
suggestion for doing this better next time. Also, 
unnecessary fumbling and going back, which the 
other children often heartily condemn, as well 

51 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

as forgetting essential things and telling them 
only when asked for them, may help him and 
us to see that we must know what our essential 
points are and order them very simply before we 
try to talk or write. In these ways the need of 
careful prevision may be made most clear — a 
need naturally intensified as the children meet 
more complex difficulties of organizing story ma- 
terials and other problems that they find worth 
undertaking. And thus the group criticism be- 
comes a strong force back of the study of pre- 
vision methods, which we have already started 
and which must be carried far if the children 
are to meet intelligently many fascinating ex- 
pressional problems.^ 

The special difficulties of criticizing mode of 
expression 

We come finally to the problem of class criti- 
cism upon the child's mode and form of expres- 
sion. In all composition, correction and criticism 
of these points appears to be the hardest prob- 
lem, the most fatal in results when ill-handled, 
the least amenable to successful attack. In so 
far as we agree that the primary essential for 
true composition work is the child's possession 

* C£. chap. Ill, pp. 68^. 
52 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

of experience and of interest in presenting it, we 
shall no doubt realize that we cannot secure our 
best results in the subject by centering our at- 
tention or that of the class upon correct forms 
and diction, as we have too often done. It is ob- 
viously essential, in order to establish effective 
ways of securing ends the child desires, to help 
him remove many deterrents to his effect, trim 
rough edges of expression, and straighten wam- 
bling ideas. But it appears necessary first to se- 
cure a mode of procedure which shall, so far as 
possible, do no harm — result in no choking and 
inhibition of children's delightful spontaneity in 
expression. Mr. Chubb in his classic discussion 
of this subject says: ''We know that teachers are 
only too prone, for ' clearness' ' sake, to change 
into a flat, commonplace, and narrow accuracy 
. . . [children's] literary surprises, which, while 
they may not pass muster under textbook rule, 
are to be more than tolerated on the score of 
their fresh and savory quality and rich connota- 
tion." ^ Whatever the spirit of the teacher in 
criticism, it is inevitably reflected by the class. 
We are, it may be hoped, getting well beyond 
the stage of everlasting nagging revision of 
children's statements. Attention to matters so 
* Teaching of English, p. 201. 
53 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

numerous can cause merely confusion and dis- 
traction of attention from the points the child 
can actually master and from whatever ideas he 
has to express. We have probably seen clearly 
enough both the choking and inhibition of ex- 
pression and the unsatisfactory gains produced 
by that method. In place of the daily and hourly 
classroom correction of children's errors, we 
must discover if we can a more effective pro- 
cedure. 

For securing useful class criticism' of chil- 
dren's manner of presenting their ideas, we must 
first of all encourage the group judgment in 
commendation of whatever is well expressed, 
— of fineness or clearness or vigor of presen- 
tation, and pleasing form and manner, — just 
as in discussing ideas and their organization. 
It is particularly needful to commend a child's 
show of improvement in any of these respects. 
But again, criticism means the most possible 
only when it is definite in working toward bet- 
terment.^ In this, good criticism is different 
from bad simply in the matter of a cooperative 
and creative as opposed to a picking and tearing 

^ Cf . The Teaching of Elementary Composition and Grammar 
(State of New Jersey, Department of Public Instruction, 
1913), p. 15. 

54 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

spirit in the class critics; and this spirit it is the 
special business of the teacher to guide and 
develop. His further duty, we have noted, is 
to enlighten this class judgment and, by raising 
its standard, to raise also the level of achieve- 
ment of the children in the group. We shall 
consider in detail later ^ specific ways for work- 
ing toward these ends, as regards both establish- 
ment in habit of essential correct forms, and 
growth in power of consciously applying needed 
principles of choice and structure. 

Conditions for Written Work 

The same preliminaries are necessary for 
written as for oral work : class discussion of pro- 
jects, thoughtful individual planning, and en- 
couragement of deliberateness of expression to 
avoid the evils of slapdash haste. Allowing a 
child to become careless in this matter of de- 
liberateness — to confuse the rough-scribbled 
notes, which it is important only that he under- 
stand himself, with the painstaking work which 
alone is worthy of handing to some one else — 
may start habits fatal to decent work later. The 
distinction is parallel to that between free and 
unplanned conversations and organized, delib- 
* Chap. IV, pp. 114/. 
55 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

erately given oral themes. But again, we must 
note particularly that writing has so many spe- 
cial difficulties of form which are likely to dull 
children's keenness that we should take pains 
not to demand too much writing and not to 
allow ourselves or the class too stringent criti- 
cism. We ought most certainly to require no 
more formality and exactness of expression here 
than in prepared oral work. 

The proof-reading of written work 

There is one special point in regard to writ- 
ten work on which it seems important to go into 
detail. This is the writer's own careful proof- 
reading of what he has done before he lets it go 
to any one else. There appears to be good rea- 
son for a child's letting his writing cool for a 
time — perhaps overnight — before he attempts 
correcting it; he is more likely to find his errors 
then. Success in this essential process must 
depend further upon his having opportunity 
to go over his work several times, note only 
one point at a time, and right every mistake he 
can discover. And special training in proof- 
reading is in all cases needed; it is not often 
carefully enough attended to. Because the writer 
will usually pass over his mistakes unnoted, — 
S6 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

since he knows what he really meant, — we 
may frequently need to have another child read 
a theme aloud and show its writer, by inevitable 
hesitations and stumbling, that the manuscript 
was not prepared, in punctuation and spelling 
and the like, for some one else's quick and easy 
understanding. Since we assume that the writer 
had, of course, an experience or a project that he 
really wanted to make known, his failure to se- 
cure this effect should prove the most effective 
lesson possible. And we can repeat this testing 
of his work as often as may be necessary to 
demonstrate the need of conforming to social 
standards. Thus we may make clear and effec- 
tive in each child's mind the idea of proof-read- 
ing his own work as well as he can — of self- 
correction. The special value of written work, 
aside from the teaching of its necessary me- 
chanics, is undoubtedly what a child may thus 
learn through it — the possibility of going over 
for himself what he has written, discovering mis- 
takes, and bettering the expression before any 
one else has opportunity or need to see the work. 

A checking-up by class pride 

But even with the best of training, the care- 
ful attention of the writer himself is rarely suffi- 

57 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

cient; we must call on the cooperative interest 
and communal pride of the class to check up 
work. Particularly, whatever will go beyond 
the class limits and represent all the group to 
some one else must be the best the children's 
fair judgment can make it, most of all in regard 
to such socially acceptable forms as all of them 
know. But this should be a long way from mean- 
ing correction or marking of all mistakes by 
the teacher and recopying of all work. We may 
hope for insistence in correction upon those 
few points which have been given complete at- 
tention until they are quite fixed in habit, and 
upon the particular matter which is in process 
of fixation at the time.^ For these essentials no 
proscription can be too severe, since they are 
a minimal but absolute requirement. In other 
matters we may allow the class to present help- 
ful and constructive suggestions, and we may 
make a reasonable few ourselves, provided we 
are very sure indeed of our wisdom and our 
powers of restraint; but outside a rigid and small 
limit, we had best realize that these are sugges- 
tions, not by any means prescriptions. 
1 Cf.pp. 114/. 



58 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

Making the class judgment graphic 
All this is fundamental for the reason that 
the whole effectiveness of work toward better- 
ing children's speech and writing appears to 
rest on the force of social judgment represented 
by the class criticism. This, to a child who has 
tried to interest or inform or influence his fel- 
lows, is a tremendous force. It can be made 
very concrete when papers are pinned on the 
bulletins or shown on a screen or when work is 
written on a board; the entire class may give 
judgment on written work as a whole then. 
Reading aloud adds the appeal to the ear, an 
excellent test for many points; but the eye is 
the sole judge of the form-conventions needful 
in writing. In the case of a manuscript so care- 
lessly prepared that the necessary changes will 
make it bad-looking, the class judgment, if the 
writer's pride does not act first, may decree that 
the child rewrite it; but this penalty should, I 
think, be reserved for such occasions only. A 
best-possible first attempt is probably many 
times more valuable than a paper almost fault- 
less from recopying; and again, second or third 
copies are often progressively worse than the 
first because they represent hateful drudgery 

59 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

and a tired, staled mind. Rewriting to do a 
thing better should of course be permitted with- 
in reason. 

In making this class judgment more deter- 
minative, we may gain much by a method of 
putting it in graphic form. A plan that seems 
very satisfactory in the working out has been 
developed by Professor C. S. Pendleton, of Wis- 
consin University and the Wisconsin High 
School. After all the themes of a set have been 
given or read before the class, each child hands 
in a folded ballot, unsigned, with a grade for 
every theme including his own, and a tabulation 
of these grades — from E to P — is bulletined. 
Again, the children may by vote select certain 
papers for exhibition on the bulletins, or for 
preservation in files, or for publication or pres- 
entation before the assembly or elsewhere; or 
they may decide which of the letters they have 
written is the best actually to send; or by a like 
process refuse acceptance or publication to 
other work. This vote may include judgment 
on the appearance of the manuscript. 

The question of correction marks on papers 

As to the indication of mistakes on pupils' 
papers, many teachers would end the regime of 
60 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

wholesale red ink by proscription of any mark 
on a paper; they would substitute class work on 
common errors, blackboard themes, and, where 
mistakes persist, conferences of the individual 
writers with the teacher or, for correcting one 
or two specific forms, with a pupil critic. And 
they would require each child's hunting out his 
mistakes for himself, unaided by suggestive sym- 
bols.^ Thus, a pupil might have on his paper, 
or on one page of it, simply the number of mis- 
takes of a given sort, like failure to indicate a 
sentence; it would be his business to attend to 
these matters before his paper could be accepted. 
For keeping effective track of pupils' work, a 
most practicable arrangement is the theme- 
card for each pupil — first suggested by Pro- 
fessor Barrett Wendell and developed by Pro- 
fessor C. S. Baldwin. On this card the most im- 
portant elements of weakness and of strength 
in each theme may be briefly noted — whether 
form-matters, wording or sentence structure, 
or larger aspects of organization. These notes can 
then be made use of in conferences and in check- 
ing up later themes for recurring tendencies. 

» Klapper, Teaching of English, chap, vii; Orr, "A Revolt 
and its Consequences," English Journal, November, 1914, 
(vol. Ill, p. 546), etc. 

61 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

It seems clear that for such essentials as we 
have once established,^ the only standard we 
can hold is either one hundred per cent accom- 
plishment or zero; a youngster either has these 
mastered or he has not; there is no place for 
gradations and middle ground. It is possible by 
holding to such standards to establish a true idea 
of thoroughness and honesty in these matters. 
And it may be hoped that teachers would not 
be so likely as under the usual regime to extend 
this method into rigid and deadly insistence that 
every infelicity be reworded. In advocating re- 
straint in these matters, we cannot call too 
strongly to mind the huge difficulties of good 
expression, especially in writing — most of us 
do not find it altogether simple for ourselves — 
or insist too heartily that the forms demanded 
shall in every case be very few and adequately 
prepared for before they are demanded at all. 

Methods and values of conference 

This, of course, means frequent conference 
with the backward pupils and checking up to see 
that essential points grow toward establishment. 
Well-handled conference with those who have 

^ As to the method of such establishment, see chap, iv, pp. 
136/. 

62 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

failed to master a needed form — secured any- 
where during study periods or while the other 
pupils are writing — may be made the most 
effective part of the teacher's work in composi- 
tion. And of course the uses of conference are 
not confined to correction of wrong forms. It 
is even more valuable in helping toward con- 
scious mastery of points of clearness or artistry 
of expression. The teacher here represents the 
class judgment. And while he may well offer 
suggestions that are in advance of what the 
class could give, he must exercise the greatest 
care that they are not above the individual 
child's level of seeing useful relations or dis- 
criminations of word or idea. It is generally 
well merely to suggest specific betterment and 
leave the child to work out his own method. It 
is hoped that reducing the number of things to 
be worked for and so concentrating on them as 
to secure their establishment may result in a 
more than compensatory saving for the teacher, 
not alone of red ink, but of nerves. 

The Third Process of Prepared Compo- 
sition — Organized Study 
So much for the child's organization and prep- 
aration of his oral or written themes and for the 

63 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

class help in correction and criticism of what he 
presents. We come, then, to the third process 
already mentioned for working out preparec' 
compositions: organized study to raise the class 
standards of thought and of expression. The 
teacher's best ofhce here, it has been suggested, 
is to help enlighten the communal criticism and 
discussion, to make it constantly keener while 
keeping it fair and friendly, and to attempt for- 
mulating principles of both organization and 
expression. Thus, we may succeed in making 
children's composition development a slowly 
upward spiral movement, in which we return 
again and again to the same sorts of problems in 
story-telling or explanation or discussion and 
meeting of common difhculties, — but each time 
discover, together with more complex difficul- 
ties, greater power and sureness in handling them 
and in judging our own and other people's re- 
sults. Out of these expressional problems dis- 
covered in the class discussions, attempted 
orally or in writing, and criticized by the class, 
should, I maintain, come all the study of tech- 
nique that we need attempt, whether of organ- 
ization, wording, or sentence-building, or the 
forms and mechanics of speaking and writing. 
In the actual work of the children on vital prob- 

64 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

lems, the teacher discovers their needs and lays 
plans for campaigns to bridge over deficiencies 
and clear impasses. And surely no other diffi- 
culties need be attacked than those the children 
actually encounter in their carrying out of real 
and varied projects in the schoolroom day by 
day. 

We have thus far in this study seen how, from 
the formless, non-social talk of little children, 
the combined forces of (i) vital subject-matter 
opening up projects requiring expression, and 
(2) an interested group of cooperative workers 
and critics may aid in the development of really 
effective expression. The needs of a small so- 
ciety for entertainment and information and 
for cooperation in solving common problems — 
needs that may reach far beyond the limits of 
the group — require more and more thoughtful 
and formed expression. Thus first arises dis- 
cussion of projects and of how to carry them 
out, and this in turn may lead to the carefully 
planned oral or written theme. 

The second factor, we have noted, is the class 
criticism of each child's performance — their 
appreciation of what is good in ideas or method 
and their suggestions of better ways. This judg- 

6s 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

ment, under the teacher's guidance, must be 
made as fair as possible, and above all its spirit 
must be helped to become truly cooperative 
and creative. But we may also encourage the 
children to keen exaction, as well as commen- 
dation, of each one's best, and even to impa- 
tience — shown with all possible courtesy, but 
unmistakably — with inattention to what they 
all know to be requisite — with lack of prepara- 
tion and with carelessness of essential forms, and 
the like. 

Finally, from this class criticism may come the 
initiation of organized study, directed by the 
skillful judgment of the teacher, to insure better 
meeting of problems. This may well arise in 
appreciation of what is organized and expressed 
with clarity and vigor and beauty, or in realiza- 
tion of the need of forms or conventions. It 
may proceed oftentimes to long and arduous and 
determined work to help gain the best results 
in attempts at expressing experiences and the 
ideas to which they give rise. The general proc- 
ess of composition development may then be 
represented roughly as follows : — 

Vital subject-matter both stimulate the child's raw 

plus and non-social impulse 

interest in other help to socialize to expression 

people's experiences 

66 



FUNCTION OF THE SOCIAL GROUP 

The remainder of this study is concerned 
with systematic examination for discovering and 
applying principles, first, of thought organiza- 
tion or prevision, and second, of effective oral 
and written expression.^ 

* Chief emphasis is here put upon compositions directed to 
the class audience or judged by them. But there are, of 
course, other sorts. In particular, there is value in certain 
intimate bits of autobiography or opinion which pupils will 
write for a really sympathetic teacher, but, particularly in the 
high-school years, would by no means publish before the class. 

For the half-dozen forms in each year's work which the 
class have fully canvassed and ranked as quite unacceptable, 
I am now using but one correction symbol, a star (*). Each 
appearance of this star in a theme margin cuts off a large 
slice of the grade, which, aside from this, represents the ideas 
and their expression, without relation to forms (cf. chap. iv). 
Under this system, these particular mistakes quickly drop 
away, and my attention is left comparatively free for con- 
structive criticism. 



Ill 

THE ORGANIZATION OF IDEAS 

A. LIMITATION AND GROUPING OF SUBJECT- 
MATTER 

How THE Need of Limitation comes to 

BE REALIZED 

We have seen how, in the free conversations of 
the classroom and in their attempts to give pre- 
pared themes, children may be helped to dis- 
cover the inadequacy of unorganized, hit-and- 
miss stories and explanations.^ They will come 
to realize that these, to be effective, need to have 
abundance of concrete detail. Thus they may 
discover for themselves that they will do well, 
in the brief time that the group can fairly allow 
each member, to limit themselves to a single 
point or brief incident; for example, that they 
had better make very clear one step in fur- 
nishing a doll house, rather than try to explain 
the whole process. Obviously this principle of 
* See pp. 45 (and footnote); 51. 
68 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

limitation must not be forced too far with little 
children; for they probably see at first, in a huge 
experience like a circus or a fire, only rather un- 
defined high lights and bits of vivid color, and 
they cannot present much detail of appearance 
or sound or the like on any one point of it. But 
gradually, as they come to realize, from the class 
suggestion and demand, the value and interest 
of specific points well presented, — things they 
have touched or smelled or seen, — they may 
try to observe more closely and accurately a 
variety of interesting details: things funny or 
significant of character like a man elbowing his 
way through a crowd, or details necessary for 
understanding a process like making a kite.^ 

For example, if the story is of Johnny's rescue 
from the water at the picnic, the point may well 
be made that we had better leave out every- 
thing about the occasion save that one matter — 
begin, perhaps, with Johnny walking with bra- 
vado on the log. over the river, and end with his 
being pulled out dripping and screaming. To 
make this one thing a real happening by means 
of concrete detail will certainly occupy a young- 
ster's time and best attention in preparing a 
page-long story or a short oral theme; he will 
1 See chap, ii, p. 22. 

69 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

only spread haphazard over a larger subject. 
This approach toward limitation to what can 
be given so specifically as to make it an actual 
experience for the audience is probably the first 
step to be taken, whether in the lower grades or 
in high school, toward helping a child organize 
the ideas he has to express. 

Determining on the Most Effective 
Details 

Having so limited a subject, a child may next 
go through it and discover all the things he wants 
to tell; perhaps he will jot them down roughly. 
It is well for the child to get before him all his 
ideas, so that he will not forget any essential 
matters — to make, as Professor Slater has it, 
"a complete mental inventory" on the subject.^ 
For instance, in planning a story of the rain that 
stopped the picnic, he may want to note down 
a good many details — remarks and giggling, 
overturned baskets, and colhsions in the scurry 
to shelter — so that the most possible of this live 
detail may be at hand when he wants it.^ Such 
an exercise as listing and selecting possibly use- 
ful details for a story or a letter may be worked 

^ Freshman Rhetoric, chap, i, p. 5. 

2 Cf. Baldwin, Writing and ispeaking, pp. iii and 122-23. 

70 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

out often on the blackboard by the whole class; 
it appears to furnish excellent preparation for 
talking or writing. In doing this, we will help 
each child, so far as he can, to be conscious of his 
readers' or hearers' needs — to think the story 
from their point of view — in order to make the 
incident he is to tell a real experience to them 
and thus win their interest. But this is prob-- 
ably not a thing we can tell him with much effect 
as a general principle; he will best learn his 
weakness, as we have seen, from the actual re- 
sponse of his audience to the story he attempts; 
then we can help him to formulate a better plan 
of attack for his next project. 

The Problem of Grouping Ideas 

The next large principle for a child to learn 
is the necessity and the method of stating to 
himself beforehand the main points or ideas he 
is to present, so that he may know exactly what 
he is about and where he is at each moment of 
his progress. Finding out how to do this in very 
simple stories in the primary grades is the first 
step toward learning to group the ideas of large 
and complex experiences later. And certainly 
it is an inescapable preliminary to arranging 
the points — the subject of the second division 

71 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

of this chapter.^ Hence the present section will 
consider the child's most effective mode of learn- 
ing to sort out the ideas he wants to express 
and throw them into small heaps or bundles for 
his own convenience in presentation and for his 
reader's in understanding him. 

In many good courses in drawing, the impor- 
tance of planning is discovered in ways similar 
to this. For example, in the section on Art in 
the Teachers College Elementary School Course^ 
Grade I, we learn how the teacher or the class in 
friendly fashion criticizes the child's rough draw- 
ings: "Your picture tells me that these people 
were larger than their house; is that what you 
mean?" — and the like.^ The next time, the 
children are helped to do better by trying to de- 
scribe their picture first or sketch in the relative 
positions and sizes. It is a parallel to this that 
I am suggesting as a mode of approach to the 
subject of organization in composition classes. 

First Type: the Plan for Small, 
Familiar Stories 

For the small, limited subject which the chil- 
dren may be encouraged to attempt first, the 

^ Pages 90^. 

2 Chapter on "Art," page 49 (1908). 

72 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

planning required is not a very difficult matter. 
We may begin it as soon as the children have 
gained freedom and confidence in telling their 
prepared stories before the class — probably in 
the fourth grade. For developing the first ideas 
of how best to set about their work here, we may 
help them to see how the stories which they know 
are built. From their retelling of stories in the 
kindergarten and the first grades many of them 
have doubtless come to discover and use the 
plan of their author without at all realizing it. 
Now, when the need for consciously planning 
their own work comes, it may be time to work 
out definitely the scheme of construction in sev- 
eral stories they already know well. By going 
through The Discontented Pine Tree^ for instance, 
it is easy for the children to discover the string 
of incidents which compose it and probably to 
tell it all in a sentence like: "This story tells 
how an unhappy little pine tree wanted glass 
leaves, then gold leaves, and then green leaves, 
but at last it was glad to get its own needles 
back again." Making such a plan sentence 
is a matter simply of telling shortly what hap- 
pened next throughout the story. ^ But in its 
crude way, this elementary process represents 
' Cooley, Langttage Teaching in the Grades, p. 31. 
73 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

the essential beginning of grouping for organiza- 
tion and stating as a few practicable points the 
ideas to be presented. We may speak of this 
result as the plan the author probably used in 
writing his story. 

Flanning the children's own small hits of 
incident: the plan sentence 

Exercises like this, repeated many times for 
all sorts of stories the children know, may be 
made the basis for their own beginnings in or- 
ganization. When the children have frankly 
criticized one another's attempts at stories as 
fumbling and, in the words of one Polish boy, 
"all under another through," it should probably 
come as a most acceptable suggestion that they 
try using the scheme of the author of The Dis- 
contented Pine Tree. At once the class as a group \ 
may attack some very small incident they have 
in mind and work out a plan sentence for it. 
In the story of Johnny's accident at the picnic 
— rather than the whole picnic, of course — the 
sentence might be, "This story is about what" 
Johnny was doing to be smart, how he gave a yell 
and fell in the river, and how Mr. Jones pulled 
him out sopping wet." By way of an introduc- 
tion to more complex problems later, it may be 
74 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

useful sometimes to put each small part of the 
plan between parallel lines, as in this plotting of 
Epaminondas: — 
In this story are: — 



Epaminondas's 


His 


His 


first visit 


second 


third 


to his 


visit: 


visit: 


Aunty: the 


the but- 


the 


cake 


ter 


puppy 


and so on to — 


Epaminondas 
^ at home: 
the pies. 





Obviously, these plan sentences will not ap- 
pear in the theme itself, any more than in the 
stories the children have read. They represent 
simply the necessary preparation. They should 
first be worked out by each child as a study in 
prevision in a number of exercises, and both the 
plans and the stories built on them discussed 
by the class. Later the class may be asked to 
give the plan sentence which must have guided 
the child who tells or reproduces a story. It^ 
seems most necessary to cultivate in children 
the power of watching for the organization of 
what they hear and read and planning carefully 
what they want to tell; and it is probably in sim- 
ple units like this that they can first learn to 

75 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

do so. Thus, in grades or even in high school, 
where we find children without ready power both 
of discovering the organization of stories or other 
small units and of planning a like simple organi- 
zation for the one-topic subjects that they must 
be able first to present, it is likely that our first 
step in guiding them toward ability in organiza- 
tion should be to help them work out the basic 
sort of problems that we have so far considered. 

Organization Study in More Complex 
Problems 

Only when these earliest projects have been 
handled pretty well individually by the children 
of any group can we pass on to the organi- 
zation of larger subjects by the same sort of 
method. The first work on more complex prob- \ 
lems may consist of bringing to a point the con- 
versation about some broad experience common 
to all the class — perhaps the camp life of In- 
dians. This may be carried out purely as an 

organization exercise — not of necessity in prep- 

aration for any theme. First, as various inter- 
esting points are suggested, the teacher or a 
pupil may note them on the blackboard. It is 
obviously best not to attempt handling too 
many details at first; but some fifteen or twenty 
76 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

may perhaps be taken down to work on. It is 
evident that there will be a great deal of over- 
lapping, and broader and lesser points mixed 
higgledy-piggledy. The teacher may now sug- 
gest: "Suppose we put these in three or four 
groups or columns something like the happen- 
ings in Epaminondas, so that we can see them 
more clearly. What shall we call these groups?" 
The pupils will make many more or less valid 
suggestions and debate them; so far as practi- 
cable, the class decision should probably deter- 
mine. Though a good teacher's suggestion rightly 
carries greatest weight, in cases like this it should 
rarely be prescriptive. In proportion as he truly 
realizes that there are usually as many good 
ways of organizing materials of a complex ex- 
perience as there are live and interested people 
to attempt it, the teacher will wait for goodr- 
suggestions from his class and encourage their 
efforts at intelligent criticism of those given. 
If various pupils propose methods which the 
rest do not endorse, each may sometimes be al- 
lowed to work out his plan in full and defend it; 
the upshot of the discussion may well be that 
each method is fairly practicable, depending, of 
course, on the precise purpose the child is work- 
ing toward. 

77 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

All the details suggested may next be can- 
vassed, some doubtless rejected, and the re- 
mainder sorted into such rough groups as the 
class have settled upon, perhaps in parallel col- 
umns.^ The final step of the grouping experi- 
ment with such a problem of the children's real 
experience may often be the construction of a 
crude sort of outline, built on the model of the 
plan sentences the children have already made. 
In the case of studying Indian life, the result in 
grade eight or nine might be something like this: 
"I'm going to tell about (i) the Indians' te- 
pees; (2) their hunting and fishing; and (3) how 
the squaws prepared the food. 

"(i) In this part comes how they made the 
tepees out of poles and skins and orna- 
mented them. 
" (2) This tells the weapons the Indians used 
and how they trapped animals for their 
skins, chased buffalo, and speared fish. 
"(3) Here I'll tell about what they cooked 
things in, and how they skinned animals 
and roasted them, and boiled meat and 
corn by putting hot stones in the water." 

* This stage of the process and the subsequent arrangement 
of points (cf . p. 90 of this chapter) is well illustrated in Klap- 
per's Teaching of English, chap, vi, pp. 64-66. 

78 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

Teachers must, I believe, cultivate surer power 
of judging the adequacy and practicability of 
very rough plans, and must help children in 
special exercises like this to group and arrange 
their ideas efifectively. The problem of arrange- 
ment is considered as a separate process in the 
second part of this chapter.^ 

Similarly, as soon as the stories the children 
read go beyond the stage of brief chains of inci- 
dents which they can represent readily in a plan- 
sentence, a wider type of organization is requi- 
site. Of course it is possible to present the plan 
of Rip Van Winkle as a succession of small 
points, such as: a description of the village; Rip's 
shiftlessness and laziness; his wife's tongue, and 
so on. But this is cumbersome and bungling, and 
the whole can be seen far better when these 
points are grouped into two or three larger divi- 
sions — perhaps (i) Rip's life in the village; (2) 
his mountain adventures; and (3) his return. 
The same procedure may likewise be used with 
the findings of all sorts of observations and class 
expeditions in nature-study or civics or indus- 
tries, with the review of materials for geography 
or history, and in attempts to correlate the 
matter of several school subjects. Even mem- 
» See pp. 90/. 

79 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

orized facts, though they are of little or no com- 
position value, may be used to advantage in 
this sort of organization lessons. In listening 
to one another's compositions, too, it is of the 
greatest value to have pupils make note of main 
divisions and report on their practicability. 

The value of study of organization 

The importance of this sort of study makes 
it apparently well worth presenting in detail; 
for it is a phase of school work in which too little 
specific help seems to have been given in the 
past — often only the general and rigid and 
usually futile requirement that teachers demand 
from children the logical ordering of their ideas 
and the organization of composition outlines. 
The result has been that college teachers find 
the great majority of students who come to them 
unable, in spite of tireless drill in outlining and 
briefing, to work out the main divisions of chap- 
ter or essay, no matter how obviously organized. 
We do not in fact, I believe, teach children to 
study and "read in ever larger units" as Pro- 
fessor Hosic has expressed it. A contributory 
cause for this may possibly be that while we 
have given attention freely to the paragraph, 
and usually centered our study in it, we have 
80 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

carried on little organized development of topics 
beyond the single-paragraph unit. For what- 
ever we mean by the term in formal rhetoric 
I believe that most people, teachers included, 
inevitably associate the word with the inden- 
tion on the page. And while such paragraphs 
as we study in grades and high school may ap- 
pear as main units or topics of a piece of work, 
it is obvious that in any large whole they do not. 
It is only, then, as we carefully group and or- 
ganize into larger units or topics the ideas we 
derive from the study of paragraphs, in some- 
what the fashion we have followed in working 
out larger units of this second type of organiza- 
tion, that we shall gain satisfactory results in 
reading and study in grammar grades and high 
school. Studies in grouping subject-matter such 
as those outlined above appear to be the most 
helpful approach to this problem. We may best 
handle them first as exercises for all the class; 
and indeed, for any problem presenting new 
difficulties, class study usually proves to be the 
best method of discovering varied suggestions. 
Later we may assign projects of the sort as in- 
dividual problems. Thus we may work steadily 
at the central point of the difficulties of previ- 
sion. 

8i 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

Early themes not to he written on such large 

outlines 
But it seems well to come back to the idea of 
limitation of subject with which we set out in 
this chapter. As this study is trying to develop* 
it, composition is the expression always of real- ^ 
ized experience, and must be so taught as in- 
variably to present problems for truly concrete 
and specific statement. Hence the suggestion' 
appears essential that the materials organized 
in the lessons just cited had better be used as 
composition subject-matter in the elementary 
school only as each child selects for his topic one 
definite small part of the subject — in the study of 
Indians, for example, the weapons for hunting 
and fishing, or the process of boiling food. The 
time or space at the grade school child's com- 
mand averages probably a page or a page and a 
half of written work or a slightly larger unit of 
speech. Within these limits he can present the 
most that he has perceived directly or in imagina- 
tion, and thus make his experience a real one to 
his audience, on only a fully limited subject. 
There is the further advantage in such a pro- 
ject that each child is provided with something 
to express that he can himself organize and 
82 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

handle independently of the class outline of the 
larger subject. 

The organization and writing of longer themes 

When the time comes for the writing of longer 
themes, these may be naturally enough devel- 
oped, either by having various groups of the 
children take each a part of the subject, or the 
same pupil develop these phases one after an- 
other at different times. Thus there may be built 
a theme on an entire large subject like Indian 
Camp Life. But all the themes which are to be 
combined must, of course, be written with the 
idea of their working harmoniously together, 
and they must be criticized with that in view. 
This problem need hardly be attempted very 
often below the eighth grade. It seems neces- 
sary that the children be really able first to 
organize smaller topics by themselves and write 
on them effectively, and that they have gained 
through the planning of larger units some power 
of grouping the ideas of their experience into a 
small number of topics convenient for han- 
dling. It is on this basis that they may best be- 
gin the transition to longer pieces of work. As 
each of the groups which the children made for 
the Indian study, for example, contains a series 

83 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

of points or incidents like tliat of the smaller 
stories they have previously organized, they 
know how to handle these. But there are diffi- 
culties in getting equally appealing and valu- 
able subject-matter to cover the whole ground, 
and particularly in stretching children's atten- 
tion over the process of constructing and criti- 
cizing a large composition whole. In high school, 
as the child's power of sustained effort grows, 
he may be encouraged to organize for himself 
and prepare as a single project, first, themes with 
two large topics two or three pages in length, 
and later, larger units such as we have seen the 
class as a group learning to get into shape for 
handling. The sole necessary condition appears 
to be that the child undertake only those prob- 
lems which he can handle by himself with some 
reasonable confidence and success. But up to 
the emergence of this type of theme, it seems 
very doubtful indeed whether it is at all impor- 
tant, except in the case of dialogue, to teach 
anything but one-paragraph themes. 

We have considered so far two types of or- 
ganization, or what we may, if we prefer, call 
one type in two distinct stages of complexity. 
The first consists of a number of small points or 
incidents, like those in such stories as The Dis- 
84 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

contented Pine Tree, which can be summed up 
in a single easy survey — stated perhaps in a 
plan sentence; this may be represented so — 1|||||. 
The second, when the speaker or writer has more 
details than he or the reader can readily keep in 
mind in this way, we may represent as a grouping 
of several simple units such as that above, so — 
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 1 1 — to whatever range of topics and sub- 
topics. It is worth noting that few topics — 
two or three or four — generally form a better 
basis for organizing one's own thought or for en- 
abling some one else to grasp it than do a larger 
number. But attempting to present materials 
under the headings "Introduction,'' "Body," 
and "Conclusion" — an apparent outgrowth of 
Aristotle's unassailable but unfortunately ap- 
plied remark that a story must have a begin- 
ning, a middle, and an end — is, of course, no 
true grouping of the ideas, and should, I main- 
tain, never be accepted as a substitute for one; 
it is the "Body" that must be grouped. The 
same may be said of biographical outlines under 
the outworn and obvious headings of "Birth 
and Parentage," "Early Education," and so on, 
or presentation of mental, moral, and physical 
benefits. 



85 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

Third Type; Interpretive Organization 

For what we may classify as interpretive 
work — the expression of opinions of any sort ^ 
— a further step is needed in the grouping pre- 
paratory to writing or speaking. It may be 
seen that the development of this type, whether 
it is argumentative or purely explanatory, cen- 
ters about a statement of opinion; we might 
represent it, as different from the other two, so: 

/The arrows are supposed to 
represent observable facts or 
other valid data, and they are 
~" to be thought of as underlying 
the opinion, whether simply 
^ I ^ making plain its meaning and 
bearings or enforcing its ac- 
ceptance. We may note here that this is the sole 
type of writing which has an interpretation sen- 
tence or statement of the upshot of the whole 
matter: the subject under discussion, that is, 
plus the predicate, the author's statement of his 
conclusion about it.^ 

' * Cf. chap. I, pp. 13 and 28. 

* The familiar term "topic sentence" apparently includes 
(a) sentences suggesting or naming the subject of a paragraph 
or larger unit — a sort of title-sentence; (6) the plan sentence 

86 



o. 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

The children early meet this interpretive form 
of writing and speaking, as we have seen, in their 
attempts to develop an explanation of what is 
difficult or a defense of their practical judgments, 
such as, "We ought to do this way about it." 
Clearly, before he sets out on this way a child 
needs' to have his judgment definitely and un-"^ 
mistakably worded as the center of his notes 
or plan, to make clear what he is supporting or 
explaining. Probably he had better write it, 
then, at the head of his list of points. For all 
the examples, the details he gives, as of cause or 
effect and the like, are there for its clarification 
and support. Obviously, in completed work this 
sentence may be the center of either a para- 
graph or part of one, a chapter, or any larger 
unit. But the child's first and chief acquaint- 
ance with the form is made in the short, one- 
topic oral themes in which he defends a pre- 
ference, tells what ought to be done about 
something, or explains a general statement — • 
a proverb, for instance, or a difficult sentence 
from his text or story — often by examples from 
his everyday experience. 

which we have been considering; and (c) the interpretive sen- 
tence, used only in this third type of composition. 



87 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

The values of study in this type 

This whole study of interpretive organiza- 
tion has fundamental values which, I believe, 
we rarely secure — a failure that we have not 
often realized. By way of experiment, some of 
us have asked many classes of normal-school 
juniors and seniors — high-school graduates all, 
and about to become teachers — to study the 
first chapter of the McMurrys' Method of the 
Recitation and find a statement of its princi- 
pal idea. Next day we have asked them to write 
out from their open books its central or topic 
thought, a sentence that should sum up the 
whole matter. It happens that in the twelve 
pages of the chapter this thought is restated in 
various forms no less than seven times. Yet 
only from ten to fifteen per cent of each class 
have usually succeeded in getting the sentence 
fairly stated in some form — never more. It is 
not wholly these young people's fault, I believe. 
They simply have not been taught the essen- 
tials of various types of organization, and par- 
ticularly that of larger units than the single 
paragraph, about a central or topic sentence. 

We have so far seen that children, in the or- 
88 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

ganization of their experience for its effective 

expression, may well begin with a decided limi- 
tation of the subject to be handled, so as to give 
place, in the time each one may fairly take, for 
full and concrete details. They should proceed 
next to reviewing these details and selecting such 
as will best serve the purpose in hand, and then 
to grouping those chosen in the simplest manner 
possible. Real and sound grouping according 
to one of three simple types is here presented 
as the true basis of the prevision problem. The 
first type is a mere string of very simple inci- 
dents or points, as in children's bits of narra- 
tive of their adventures. The second consists 
in putting into a few convenient groups of such 
points a number of details too large to be han- 
dled in the first way, as in the account of Indian 
life or the story of Rip Van Winkle. The third 
tjrpe, the method for explaining and supporting 
one's opinions, is accomplished by massing all 
the ideas or groups of ideas to be presented about 
a central thought or judgment — a subject for 
discussion plus a predication about it — to show 
that they all underlie or support that judgment; 
this is illustrated in explanation of sentences, 
debate about projects, and the like. 
It has seemed essential to go so far into detail 

89 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

about the subject of grouping ideas and to leave 
the parallel development, that of arrangement, 
to the following section, simply because the 
grouping of ideas seems to have been the place 
of least success in former teaching of composi- 
tion, has had the least attention, yet is after 
all the basic and necessarily preliminary process. 

B. ARRANGEMENT AND CONNECTION OF 
MATERIAL 

Arrangement oe Ideas — A Problem in 
Psychology 

To complete the study of organizing ideas for 
composition, there remains consideration of 
their arrangement and connection. The need 
for arranging points to be presented is gener- 
ally expressed in a demand for logical order. 
But the difficulty is by no means met with a 
knowledge of such useful, direct highways of 
thought as Aristotle's categories. For since 
real composition is a matter always of adapting 
materials of one's own experience to the com- 
prehension of some one else, the problem has 
to be studied always in relation, not alone to- 
the subject-matter to be expressed, but also to 
the precise knowledge and capabilities of the per- 
son who is to view it. The one governing idea 
90 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

of all these methods of arrangement for composi- 
tion prevising may be stated in a sort of key- 
principle of the arrangement methods: Related 
ideas must be kept together, in an order that is clear 
and easy for the reader to follow. 

Four Types of Arrangement 

Four large types of arrangement of ideas for 
the purpose of making them easily understand- 
able to a reader or hearer are discussed in this 
chapter. The first and almost universal one is 
time order; it is used probably in nine tenths of 
the cases where ideas are presented in words. 
But it is not by any means all-sufficient; modi- 
fications of time order are necessary almost 
from the start of composition work in providing 
for the proper beginnings of stories and explana- 
tions. Besides, the demand for force and vigor 
in organization appears early, and gives rise 
to the second arrangement method discussed, 
the emphasis principle. Again, clearness is by 
no means always to be attained through time 
order; and so there must be developed a third 
broad group of principles which we may sum- 
marize by noting that they suggest telling basic 
things first. These also are, of course, combined 
with the time order in many cases, but they so 

91 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

fundamentally modify it that they have to be 
considered as a distinct method. And finally, — 
probably one of the latest relations to be de- 
veloped in children's composition work, — it 
is sometimes most practicable to present sense- 
impressions as they are observed in their space 
relation; this is the fourth type of arrangement. 

The Earliest Arrangement Problems — 
Time Order 

In the early work which children do in com- 
position, arrangement is a matter of practically 
no difficulty. As appears to have been demon- 
strated by many experiments, these should be 
quite simple narratives and, later, processes 
which move straight forward in time order. We 
have seen in our consideration of grouping and 
plan sentences how the child may be helped to 
learn the value of a simple sort of prevision for 
his own stories through seeing it in others' work 
and discovering its lack in his own. There is 
little further to the technique of oral or written 
work at this stage — the type of practically all 
the composition in the elementary schools. How- 
ever, additional points soon require attention. 
For instance, the audience may often note scant- 
iness of detail or of needed information especially 
92 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

at the start of a story or process. In an explana- 
tion, the speaker may very often have failed to 
tell just what he was explaining, and after he has 
finished, the children may remind him of their 
confusion. It does not take much class discussion 
to clinch this point firmly; an explanation, we see, 
must always tell first what it is explaining. 

There is a somewhat similar need in stories, 
but the matter is rather more delicate and difii- 
cult there. To demand that every incident the 
children write or tell must begin according to 
formula with such sentences as, "I was going 
south on Third Street with Willis Jones about 
four o'clock last Friday afternoon," will go a 
long way toward killing all originality and 
spontaneous happiness in expression; it must 
also produce very bunglesome results. It ap- 
pears not to be a true principle in any case; 
good stories rarely start so. To be sure, some- 
thing of time, place, and persons is always 
needed, and the children, with their natural in- 
terest in specific names and occasions, will very 
probably ask for it. But there is a yet more im- 
perative demand; the thing to do at the start 
of a story is to stir the interest of the audience.^ 

* Cf. C. S. Bailey, For the Story-Teller, chap, iii: "When the 
Curtain Rises"; cf. also the emphasis principle, p. 94. 

93 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

Next in importance comes what the class need 
in order to make the story real and clear; what 
this is may be derived from their demands in 
criticism. It seems probable that if we attempt 
to formulate this — I doubt whether we shall 
need to do so — it will appear something like: 
We must always tell early whatever the audi- 
ence need to make the story opening clear and 
vivid. 

The Emphasis Principle 

So far, we have discussed merely how simple 
may be the prevision, built on a plan sentence 
and in direct time order, for such early prob- 
lems as telling a brief incident with descriptive 
detail or explaining a process. A second arrange- 
ment principle often proves helpful in these 
stories — discovered perhaps in grade five or 
six — and of greater value still to later types 
of composition work. We often feel hopeless at 
the ragged endings of small incidents and the 
like; the child sometimes stands awkward, un- 
certain himself whether he has finished what 
he had to tell. Then, from a group discussion 
of how to meet this problem, the children may 
come to value the contribution which special 
attention to the placing of details may make. 

94 



J 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

The need of getting interest in story beginnings 
has suggested that we begin with vivid or striking 
detail — action or color or the like ; we may now 
see the even greater value of saving for the end 
something significant or unexpected — something 
that tells most about the persons in the story 
or the upshot of the happening. The teacher 
need not look far to find in short stories many 
excellent examples to illustrate and enforce this 
important point. In every case, I believe, we 
should encourage for these places concrete details, 
and not general impressions or other opinions. 

Thus, we may note that what we first observe 
about people is often some extreme of dress or 
action; this naturally comes early in our ac- 
count. But in most cases what is far more 
significant about the person — a small bronze 
veteran-button, or an unobtrusive, kindly word 
or action — is not so quickly discoverable; it is, 
besides, the one best thing to reserve to the last 
to make us acquainted with him. Likewise, a 
good thing for the first of a story is action or 
other observable detail which at once and sharply 
strikes upon the attention. For the end comes 
best the idea which gives the story its individ- 
ual and sometimes surprising turn — reverses 
the movement of its plot or our estimate of its 

95 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

characters. A classic example is, of course, Mau- 
passant's The Necklace; The Wolf and the Three 
Pigs likewise represents the principle. Good and 
effective details about people all around us may 
be observed and massed to give a like final effect, 
as of a boastful boy confronted suddenly with 
real danger, or of a man sitting, buried in his 
newspaper, in a street car, who discovers that 
his wife has stood for some time watching him. 
The idea of limitation already developed may be 
helpful in suggesting that the story end promptly 
after this determining incident. Children's small 
stories may be helped to gain remarkably in 
firmness from study to use this simple emphasis 
principle. And its later application to many 
other types of themes such as descriptions and 
arguments is too well known to require more 
than mention. Next to realization of the value 
of specific sense-detail, this is, I believe, the 
most significant principle for securing vigor and 
interest in children's compositions, whether in 
grades or in high school. 

The children have worked, up to this point, 
to gain a good grasp on arrangement of limited 
subjects — incidents and processes, chiefly in 
time order. Except for the suggestions already 
developed about starting right and about ar- 

96 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

ranging one's observings for most emphasis, 
both the simple stories children tell and their 
explanations of how to make a cake or a rabbit- 
house or to ring in a hre alarm may be made 
quite clear by chronicling them in the order of 
happening. And there is ahnost no end to these 
subjects which children may discover and which 
they must learn to handle mth real facility be- 
fore they attempt more difficult arrangements. 
To be able to tell or write a small incident shorn 
of needless tag-ends and so filled with live de- 
tail that it reconstructs an experience in the 
imagination of its hearers is one of the most 
generally useful forms of art. Many teachers 
who have helped normal children in this, with- 
out blocking their way with needless criticisms 
and formulary exactions, know how beautifully 
a majority of them — even the most unprom- 
ising sometimes — come to such power in a 
social classroom. Thus is developed one of the 
most pleasant social graces, the basis of charm- 
ing conversation and letter-writing. It prob- 
ably deserves more school time and far more real 
help in the way of tactful constructive criticism 
than we usually have given. 



97 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

The Principles of Bases First 

Only when children are reasonably sure of 
their ground in this matter of time-order stories 
and process themes — not perhaps before the 
seventh or even the eighth grade — may they 
profitably attempt more complicated types of 
arrangement. They should now have grasped 
definitely, through working it out in innumer- 
able plain problems, the value and method of 
grouping their limited subject-matter and build- 
ing a plan sentence to develop it on. There now 
comes the need for solving problems that will 
not yield to an attack in time order. From the 
studies here begun, we may hope with wise 
guidance to bring to light the third, probably 
the most significant and practicable of the prin- 
ciples of arrangement. It consists of two modes 
which for convenience we may call the group of 
putting basic things firsts and includes giving first 
{a) the apparatus and the principle of a game or 
other process, and (6) what is known to the reader 
or is easy for him to grasp. In our discussion 
of how to secure digestion of experience ^ we have 
already come upon the most important princi- 
ples and procedures in this group. 
* See chap, i, pp. 8-14. 

98 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

The apparatus and purpose first 
The first problem to require one of these 
methods may very probably be the attempt to 
explain an interesting game. The boys, perhaps, 
want to teach the girls captain ball. The girls 
are interested, and very courteous in trying to 
make the best of what the boys tell them; but 
actually they can't get much out of it. Here 
usually the teacher must show to what the fail- 
ure is due, and the class may then set to work 
on a plan for making the subject clear. It de- 
velops that the first essential in this case is to 
know the court or ground used and the mark- 
ings on it; to begin at the beginning of the game 
without knowing this is merely confusing. Yet 
even when we have the apparatus in order and 
understood, our natural tendency to go right 
ahead is likely to make us omit something else 
that is essential; we may neglect altogether to 
tell what it is all about. Very likely it will re- 
quire the breakdown of a second attempt also 
to demonstrate that as near as possible to the 
start in such explanations as this, but generally 
after the account of the grounds or apparatus, 
the point or purpose of the whole must appear. 
A good deal of practice on problems of this type 

99 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

is necessary; they demand pretty close thinking. 
And finally the class may attempt stating this 
principle for themselves as essential to many 
cases of the sort, particularly for games and 
processes — whether captain ball or cards or 
cookery. This is the first of the essential ar- 
rangements under the head of basis first; we 
may call it the principle of giving apparatus and 
purpose first. Of course grade-school children 
are able to handle only fully concrete and ob- 
servable cases of this; and even of these, the 
more complex examples like baseball are prob- 
ably quite beyond their power till the later years 
of high school. 

The known and simple first 

The second means of arranging with basis 
first appears when the class attempt such an 
eminently social project as explaining for a 
smaller child, or for some one who lives in a 
different place, some matter quite definite and 
clear to the writers. Corn-growing may be thus 
obvious to prairie farm-children or shaft-sink- 
ing to those in a mining district. Or a child may 
investigate some observable new matter like 
horseshoeing, and, as he begins without know- 
ing anything about it himself, have the advan- 

lOO 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

tage of better imagining the needs of his hearers. 
The best way of studying the problem of ex- 
pressing such matters is to have the child tell 
what he knows before the class. He may then 
be helped to discover that his success is in pro- 
portion to his care to start with what his friends 
already know or can easily build up from their 
actual experience, as his teacher will probably 
have suggested to him in the preliminary dis- 
cussion. For instance, he may tell them that a 
horse's hoof is like a finger nail, only all one nail 
and very thick over the whole bottom of the 
foot. Or he may compare veins of metal to the 
filling between layers in a cake, and the shaft 
and cage to a bucket in a well or an elevator 
going down into the earth. Where he fails, as 
he will in greatest measure do at first, we may 
help him to discover that he has not thus fig- 
ured on what his audience can best see first, 
and built on that. Teachers and texts are sup- 
posed to know and use this arrangement prin- 
ciple above all others; to the extent to which 
we realize and develop its possibilities in our 
pupils, we may make it extraordinarily valuable 
for getting the children into a teacher attitude 
toward the subjects they attempt to tell about. 
We may call this the principle of telling first what 

lOI 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

is known or simple for the reader or hearer. A 
great many exercises in this type richly repay 
the effort of working with them. Their chief 
object is to determine how we must begin and 
proceed to make what we know a reality to peo- 
ple who have not the opportunity of observing 
it for themselves. As a preliminary study, then, 
we need to discuss in class, not alone the limi- 
tation and grouping, but the precise experience 
and knowledge of the people whom we are go- 
ing to interest and help with our explanation — 
as in the case of the paper-making themes ^ — 
and how best to meet their needs. 

The two arrangement methods which we have 
just been considering present specific directions 
for giving basic things first, essential to clear- 
ness in explaining any but the most utterly sim- 
ple matters: beginning with (i) fundamentals 
like the apparatus or purpose in a game, or (2) 
the phase of the subject known to the audience 
or most readily comprehensible to them. Each 
method is worth long and careful experimenta- 
tion and thoughtful class criticism of results 
secured. For a child must himself come to real- 
ize the need of these in his one-topic themes on 
facts of his concrete experience and, with the 
* See chap, i, p. 32. 
102 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

help and suggestions of teacher and classmates 
in discussion, master their difficulties; if he 
merely has the principles dictated to him and 
is directed to apply them, he will scarcely gain 
power which will serve him in high school or 
afterward for mastering the longer, complex 
problems which he must organize and present. 

Problems of Arrangement in Visual 
Description 

The sketch outline first 

The type of arrangement remaining to be dis- 
cussed concerns the ordering of details accord- 
ing to their position in space; it is used most 
often in recording observations which cannot 
be handled in time order — descriptions of 
rooms and landscapes and personal appearance, 
for instance. Such problems, indeed, appear in 
a most rudimentary form in the child's attempt 
to give a sentence or two of descriptive detail 
— of his dog or chum — in the incidents he 
tells. The story-teller or other early type of 
theme has small place, to be sure, for extensive 
account of still life — buildings, and people not 
doing something, and the like.^ But the audi- 
ence, stimulated and encouraged in their inter- 
» Cf. chap. I, p. s, 
103 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

est in vivid impressions, may come early to ask 
for and to approve details of color and shape 
and the like as well as of sound and movement. 
In adding a sentence or two of this sort, the 
children may presently find out the necessity 
for the outHne of what they describe — person 
or animal or boat. The class may want to know 
the size of the child in the story and whether he 
was fat or lank; for we often want the author to 
help us see his own hero, not leave us always to 
make up one. How much the encouragement 
of questioning of this sort heightens the effect 
and where it begins to be overdone must be de- 
cided by watching carefully the children's actual 
responses. 

In the smallest efforts of this sort to give a 
clear visual impression, the basis is laid for the 
final type of arrangement which we shall con- 
sider here: For describing anything, we learn, its 
outline must be given early, much as a painter 
blocks in his figures or sky-hne before adding de- 
tail; and then the details must be arranged in it. 
This outline may be the shape of harbor or val- 
ley, like Stevenson's description of the Bay of 
Monterey, or it may be the conformation of the 
land — "fields of wild hill that ran east and 
south" — or it may most often, in children's 
104 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

work, be the sketch outline of a figure; F. Hop- 
kinson Smith has "a thinly constructed mili- 
tary gentleman, all sword and mustache." It 
should be distinctly noted that this principle 
demands not a vapory sentence of "general im- 
pression,'^ whether at start or finish, but a spe- 
cific frame to fit details into. Indeed, the whole 
art of helping children in writing and speaking, 
as this study urges it, is based on the idea of 
showing them how to search out and give not 
general but specific details. Thus they may help 
their readers or hearers to get clear sense-im- 
pressions of action or object or whatever is pre- 
sented, whether as a basis for coming at conclu- 
sions or merely as a piece of experience. While, 
therefore, there can be no objection to the child's 
adding his impression or opinion where he wants 
to, I beheve that this is not the ideal of stories 
and descriptions that we should work toward. 
Further, as would seem to be shown by Miss 
Vostrowsky's brief study already referred to,^ 
it is probable that the child will most often omit 
them, in this narrative-description type espe- 
cially, if he is simply encouraged to tell what he 
perceives. A child's vigorous account of hap- 
penings he has seen, given naturally out of class, 
1 Barnes's Studies in Education, vol. i, p. 15. 
105 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

may well be contrasted with the strings of gen- 
eralization which are sometimes accepted as 
themes in grades and high school. 

But the child's visual details in stories and 
the like remain for a long time only fugitive 
and brief; we will best, I think, come to longer 
problems of arrangement of details in space very 
late, though their use in numerous geography 
topics, like accounts of harbors and river val- 
leys, may secure their introduction possibly in 
grade seven or eight. It has been suggested be- 
fore ^ that ideas which can be handled better 
in some other medium, like drawing and model- 
ing, had better not be forced into speech or 
writing. When the need does come for studies 
requiring space arrangement, whether in geog- 
raphy or other problems, it seems best that the 
themes called for be distinctly shorter than is 
usually expected — |>erhaps five or six sentences 
only at first. There appears to be no question 
whatever that we have badly overworked this 
type, quite out of proportion to its presence 
and usefulness in talking and writing outside 
the classroom; a concrete detail or two selected 
to really individualize is most effective in de- 
scribing, 

* See chap, i, p. $. 
io6 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

Details given in arrangement in space 
When such a problem has been attacked by 
working first on the outline to be sketched in, 
we may next help children in arranging their 
details in the outline. The plan they adopt may 
be any one that shows the relation of their points 
in space; connectives are helpful here. The sole 
requirement is that they do not jump about, 
aimless and flea-like, in presenting what they 
have seen. In describing the harbor, they may 
begin at the breakwater and proceed by the 
channel to the slips, for instance. Only simple, 
practical subjects like this are worth attempting. 
The child must first develop a definite and work- 
able order of details for his account and be able 
to present his oral or written theme so that he 
can get the criticism of the class on its actual 
effect. 

The prevision of most of the small problems 
the children handle can best be completed by 
the single plan sentence already discussed : "My 
story tells about the blacksmith's anvil and 
forge, then how he shapes and fits the shoe, 
and then how he nails it on," for instance. 
Whether this appears in the actual theme or not 
107 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

— there is no need for it in most cases — it is 
the conclusion and test of prevision. 

The danger of methodizing organization study 

Such a discussion as this of specific ways of 
grouping and arranging details is likely to be 
misleading: the impression is almost inevitable 
that one way or another is certainly valid al- 
ways for meeting a given sort of problem. On 
the contrary, though for certain cases, like ex- 
planation of a game, usually only one way is 
quite practicable, what will work best in most 
cases is a combination of methods, and any pos- 
sible approach is good according to the actual 
clearness and interest it produces in practice. 
For example, a visualization succeeds directly 
in the degree that it shows skill in its combina- 
tion of (i) the principle of giving the outline 
early and the other details in space order with 
(2) the method of putting the vivid first and 
the significant last for emphasis. The procedure 
in a social class may then consist first of dis- 
cussing various ways of handfing a given com- 
position problem. The result of such discussion 
should be to determine which methods are best, 
by testing their effect in actual oral or written 
themes and criticizing fairly and keenly. All 
108 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

this is to be conditioned by the knowledge that 
there are really a great many possible ways of 
arranging the materials of almost any com- 
plex problem. 

Each stage of developing ability in thinking is 
thus the child's social experimentation in carry- 
ing out actual projects to the best of his ability. 
From his partial success he must learn to do bet- 
ter through his fellows' judgment of his perform- 
ance. 

The Use of Connectives 

We may consider briefly the problem of con- 
necting the parts of topic or theme. Wherever 
a new idea comes in — whether it is a reason, 
an example, or an added point or incident of any 
kind — we must make sure that the reader 
knows its precise relation. Even if it is but the 
subordinate part of a sentence, we try to obvi- 
ate an instant's doubt. This is as useful as 
guide-posts at turnings in strange country, or, 
as a recent writer says, as the lamp-posts with 
street-signs upon them in the city.^ Children's 
attempts to work out this problem in high school 
are bunglesome enough at first, but lessons on 
the great variety of possible connectives and 
* Rice, College and the Future, p. 34. 
109 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

numberless exercises will reinforce the class de- 
mand that a pupil not only think but express 
his idea of the relative meaning and importance 
of his points. Only from years of practice can 
one learn to make transitions that are unmis- 
takable, but neither raw nor baldly repetitious. 
We may be content, in grade and high-school 
work, to leave the art to ^'follow how it can." 
It is only in narrative and descriptive forms that 
the need of artistry outweighs that of specific 
clearness, and even here it is a matter which 
we probably cannot work at bludgeonly with 
prescription and correction. 

We have seen in the course of this chapter 
how the growth of children's power both of group- 
ing and of ordering their ideas may be some- 
what definitely furthered. The grouping we 
have for convenience divided into three types: 
(i) the small, simple unit; (2) the massing of 
two or more units or topics like the first; and 
(3) the grouping of ideas or topics about an in- 
terpretive sentence. Such grouping, it has been 
urged, is the fundamental and essentially first 
process of organization. When children can really 
handle simple units of the first and third types, 
and can further select ideas of a larger experi- 

IIO 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

ence and throw them into a few groups as in 
the second type, they are capable of mastering 
in practical fashion most problems of organizing 
their own ideas. 

There follow the methods of arrangement for 
clearness and force. Besides the preponderant 
and most useful and natural (i) time order, 
there is required for vigor (2) the emphasis prin- 
ciple of putting striking ideas at the beginning, 
but most significant ones at the end. For mak- 
ing explanations clear, it is essential to discover 
and use the various principles of (3) putting 
basic things first — either what is fundamental 
like the apparatus and purpose of game or proc- 
ess, or what is known or simple for the reader. 
Finally, for problems of visual observation we 
need to use the arrangement of (4) putting the 
outline first and fitting the details in space rela- 
tion into it. 

As to children's actual method of work in 
solving organization problems, it is likely that 
there are many good individual methods, but 
none to be assigned in general. Some may really 
do best to write first in mad and scrabbled 
haste, for themselves only, and then revise, and 
thus clear their thoughts before they attempt 
talk or writing for any one else; these need to 
III 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

remember that a thing written, as Stevenson 
puts it, "more than half convinces" us that it 
is adequately expressed, and that we sometimes 
have to fight free of its particular wording. Most 
people, probably, do better to make lists of 
points, cast out and add, and draft at least a 
rough grouping before writing connectedly at 
all. This has the double advantage of making 
reasonably sure of the organization and some- 
times also smoothing the way with a felicitous 
expression noted down. The only point that we 
can make arbitrarily for every pupil is that com- 
petent grouping and arrangement — whether 
mental, oral, or written — is absolutely requi- 
site to speaking or writing that is of value for 
communication. The main lines of organiza- 
tion as suggested in this chapter are intended 
to represent the sort of thinking one must do 
in meeting typical problems. 

If the treatment of organization thus given 
has seemed like a formulizing which would go 
far in the ancient ways of stifling children's in- 
terest and individuality in expression, we may 
need to remember that we have attempted re- 
viewing briefly a course of development that runs 
through all the elementary and high-school years 
and that is, of course, far from accomplished then. 

112 



PREVISION OF IDEAS 

The principles here derived, above all, are not 
intended for prescription and memorization, but 
should be come at by experiment, criticism, and 
discussion; if they are then formulated, it should 
generally be in the children's own way. Organ- 
ization power is here presented as a matter of 
increasing skill in dealing with every sort of 
problem in real expression. The mode of growth 
suggested is by the socialization of children's 
thinking through the criticism of a cooperative 
audience. 



IV 

EVOLUTION AND ATTAINMENT OF 
EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

Respect the child, respect him to the end, but also respect 
yourself. . . . You are trying to make that man another you. 
One's enough. Emerson, Education. 

A. MINIMUM FORM-ESSENTIALS AND 
THEIR ESTABLISHMENT 

We have attempted to gain some view of the 
best means for building a social group of chil- 
dren interested in expression because they wish 
to achieve common ends, and of the ways in 
which such a group may help children in organ- 
izing the ideas they have to express. But this 
essential prevision is, of course, only one phase 
of the expressional problem. There remains to 
be considered the more generally discussed and 
probably far more difficult problem: How may 
we best work toward more true and artistic ex- 
pression of the individualities and experiences 
of children? As has been suggested, the motive 
force which we shall attempt to use here also 
is the cooperative effort of the group to work 
out in common projects requiring effective ex- 
pression. 

114 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

Two Large Types of Expressional 
Difficulties 

We shall attempt to discover a successful mode 
of campaign against these difficulties first by 
grouping them into two distinct classes: ^ 

A. What we may by correction brand as so- 
cially acceptable or unacceptable forms — posi- 
tively right or wrong. 

B. What we may better criticize as simply 
more or less clear and forcible and pleasing ways 
of expression. 

It is obviously impossible to decide exactly 
what forms are so far displeasing as to deserve 
proscription and what may just escape it. And 
yet I believe it can be shown that certain necessary, 
largely arbitrary forms of speaking and writing 
can be best established through sharp and unre- 
mitting attention to them as tite acceptable forms till 
they are quite fixed in habitual and almost uncon- 
scious reaction, whereas other matters quite as 
essential can be better attended to in other ways. 

Four Sorts of Arbitrary Form-Conventions 

By way, then, of attempting a practicable 

division, it seems convenient to put into the first 

* The importance of this division was first suggested to me 
by Miss Edith White, of the Milwaukee State Normal SchooL 

115 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

class (A) four types of form-conventions to be 
established as habits: (i) Grammatical forms 
may be taken to include all essential inflections 
and distinctions between parts of speech, to- 
gether with such idioms as the proper expres- 
sion of the negative. If these are essential, they 
must be drilled thoroughly into habit; for it 
seems to be in no other way than as unconscious 
reactions that such forms serve any very useful 
purpose, in speech at least. They. extend from 
exclusively arbitrary ones, like you were, — the 
specific form having no more reason than has 
a starched collar, — to those like lie and lay 
which demand some logical discrimination of 
the idea and sorting out of right forms from a 
mixed mass. But all are alike classed here as 
forms because of the need and the possibility 
that they may, if rightly handled, be reduced 
to unconscious habit. 

The same thing is true of (2) punctuation. The 
correct forms for quotations and for end-punc- 
tuation of sentences may be learned simply by 
drilling them in — a '^ brutal act of memory." 
The marking-off of non-restrictive phrase and 
clause modifiers, to be sure, often involves such 
close discriminations of idea that it never, per- 
haps, becomes unconscious habit. But in the 
116 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

measure that it is possible, as it certainly seems 
desirable, for necessary punctuation principles 
to become practically automatic, they are to be 
considered in the list of forms. The same is 
obviously true of (3) essentials in spelling and 
pronunciation. There remain in this category of 
forms (4) certain further courtesies of speech 
and writing, such as decent posture and address, 
good appearance of manuscript, clear-cut enun- 
ciation, and avoidance of positive vulgarity in 
expression like coarse slang and argot. 

That the list of forms thus presented contains 
matters distinctly important to effective and 
therefore socially good expression is sufficiently 
apparent. To attempt without knowledge and 
heed of them to *'play the showman" to one's 
possessions courts inevitable failure, because the 
attention of the spectators is unfortunately di- 
verted to the uncouth dress of the puppets or 
to the ungainly puppet-master. 

The Question of Minimum Essentials 

As we look at this problem of achieving ac- 
ceptable forms, its complexity sometimes seems 
fearful and hopeless. Perhaps for this very rea- 
son, the method of attack has too often been a 
mad haste to cover all points at once; that is, we 
117 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

have given attention in every school year to 
each in turn of almost numberless matters. As 
a result, schools and teachers are everlastingly 
being charged with failing in just the essen- 
tials that we are considering. And, indeed, any 
lapse in these matters is so evident as to call 
sharp and immediate attention. The retort of 
most teachers, too, has been upon those of classes 
below them. Yet there appears to have been 
small lack of conscientious earnestness all along 
the course. Consequently, it appears that many 
teachers are coming pretty rapidly to doubt the 
efficacy of the daily and hourly correction of all 
errors — the patient marking with red ink and 
revising, the persistent, wearisome checking and 
recasting of children's statements — which have 
been the regular order of the English teacher's 
day. If we do honestly question the method we 
have faithfully tried, if we wonder whether, in 
face of the forces against us, we have not been 
attempting too much in the matter of accep- 
table forms, is it not worth while at least to 
examine the ground which it is altogether im- 
perative that we cover, and try to fix the corres- 
ponding amount which we can really expect to 
achieve adequately, thoroughly, and finally? 
Recent investigations have seemed to throw 
ii8 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

some rays of hope into this dark district and to 
offer the chance of a clearer view. For example, 
the investigators of children's speech errors in 
the Boise, Idaho, schools discovered that ten 
per cent of the total came from mistakes in the 
principal parts of only four verbs — do, come, 
see, and go.^ This, though it may not be wholly 
typical, seems to indicate the kind of help such 
form investigations may give us. Dr. Klapper, 
indeed, believes that the gross habitual speech 
errors of children, which the elementary school 
needs to eliminate, in all number but about thirty 
to thirty-six.^ Similarly, Dr. Charters's ^ in- 
vestigation in Kansas City demonstrated that 
nearly half the errors in written work there 
(forty-six per cent) arose from various forms of 
failing to recognize and indicate sentences; 
thirty per cent came from omission of periods.^ 
Various studies have done a similar service for 

* Earhart and Small: " English in the Elementary School," 
Elementary School Journal, vol. xvi, p. 32. 

2 Teaching of English, p. 32. 

* Charters and Miller, A Course of Study in Grammar based 
on Investigations in the Kansas City, Missouri, Public Schools, 
Table B. Bulletin, January, 1915, Education Series 9. Pub- 
lished by the University of Missouri, Columbia. 

* It should be noted, however, that these figures represent 
written work from the second grade on, and are not distrib- 
uted. 

119 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

spelling. There seems to be need in every con- 
siderable school system for thoroughgoing and 
expert study of these problems of forms to de- 
termine their boundaries and area; but enough 
has been done, apparently, to show the general 
topography and to suggest that attention rightly 
given to a few regions will make the whole less 
rugged and impenetrable-looking. 

Decision as to what is really essential in these 
fields is of course impossible to reach finally 
without further most careful investigations. 
The Study of Language Sensibility, by Professor 
Joseph Jastrow, — to be pubhshed shortly, — 
promises to reveal most as to the judgments of 
cultivated people on certain forms usually con- 
demned wholesale and without discrimination 
of relative objectionableness. It is a pleasing 
and hopeful thing that classifications of errors 
in the making of courses are now generally 
made in the Hght of broader knowledge of what 
is acceptable English usage to-day — in knowl- 
edge, at least, of what the makers of dictionaries 
have concluded to be actually national and repu- 
table present usage — and are not based on only 
the dogmatic fiat of purists. It begins to look as 
if an enormous lot of forms that we have in- 
sisted on may not actually be worth the tre- 

120 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

mendous effort of proscription and correction. 
Dr. Reynolds, for example/ suggests that many 
which we have rigorously attended to — com- 
prising, he thinks, fully one half of the bulk of 
most rhetorics — are actually questions of di- 
vided usage and should be let alone; and that 
still other forms we have painfully inculcated — 
like the quotation within a quotation — are really 
valueless to the children who try to learn them. 

Minimum Form Essentials for Each 
School Year 

A specific, if merely tentative, determination 
seems necessary, before we approach the prob- 
lem of how to accomplish our aims here, as 
to the forms which are necessary and attain- 
able for each particular grade group or school 
year. The result we should undoubtedly aim 
at is such thorough establishment of the essen- 
tial forms that they will function in the street, 
at home — everywhere the child has occasion 
to speak or write. That is to say, we should 
aim at one hundred per cent accomplishment 
of a few things rather than ^'sl namby-pamby 
achievement of about seventy-five per cent" 

1 "For Minimum Standards in English," English Journal, 
June, 1915 (vol. IV, p. 349). 

121 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

in a more complex problem.^ We know how sel- 
dom such full accomplishment as this is reached 
even with regard to the most obviously funda- 
mental matters; we realize also that we have 
against us, in m^any cases, the whole force of 
home and neighborhood heedlessness and ignor- 
ance. How are we to reach our aim? 

If our method is to effect such thorough fixa- 
tion of the right form in habit that the correct 
reaction will quite supplant the incorrect, it seems 
obvious that we cannot attack so many mis- 
takes at once as we have done. We have appar- 
ently failed oftenest because we have let our 
conscientiousness prescribe such a host of cor- 
rections that the child is unable even to remem- 
ber them. While he is attending to one, trying 
hard to get that quite established, other mis- 
takes naturally creep in. Now, we are tempted 
to draw his attention to these, with the result 
that he breaks the chain of habit formation he 
has begun and fails to remember the first point. 
"Thus we actually keep him at work on a prob- 
lem that is too complex for him — that has more 
items than his span of attention can possibly 
embrace. We keep him fluttering, and he can- 
not settle down enough to learn anything. It 
» Cf. Reynolds, "Minimum Standards," op. cit. 
122 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

is all a haze to him — in some cases, a grue- 
some darkness.'' ^ Dr. Klapper insists that not 
above three to six specific bad habits of gram- 
mar and idiom can be thoroughly eradicated in 
each school year, in average classes. ^ And if 
we are to take as our standard full attainment 
of each correct form we attempt, we must de- 
cide to settle upon a definitely minimal stan- 
dard probably no more numerous than these. 
It is reasonably certain that success here de- 
pends almost wholly on the teacher's willingness 
to pass by not only a host of minor mistakes 
and infelicities of expression, but even for some 
time a large part of the positive and very bad 
errors the children are guilty of. For it is evi- 
dent that we must concentrate our force on one 
point, or very small and closely related group of 
points, for a far longer time than we generally do 
at present, instead of attacking several at once, 
diffusing attention, and confusing our pupils. 

Tentative Sketching op a Minimal List 
BY Grade Groups 

It is clear that such definite standards can be 
best set only by each school or school system 
for its own use. Once they are set, it should be 

1 Dr. E. 0. Finkenbifader. « Op. cit., p. zz. , 

12S 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

demanded that every child promoted to a given 
grade have complete mastery of the essential 
forms for the grade he is leaving, or be so spe- 
cifically conditioned that his next teacher may 
know precisely where to go to work. If the 
standard is to be so rigorous, it must of course 
be absolutely minimal. Merely as a trial sketch, 
quite tentative, and based as yet on no thor- 
ough investigation, I may be permitted to sug- 
gest the following minimal form conventions. 
The list is presented here with the idea that it 
might be used as a basis for study and experi- 
mentation in specific schools and fundamen- 
tally revised to meet the test of use. Each school 
system must no doubt incorporate local mistakes; 
however, it will probably be best not to increase 
the list, but to make compensatory reductions, 
since what is here given is supposed to represent 
the amount that can be done thoroughly in nor- 
mal time and conditions. 

(i) Grammar and idiom 
In the matter of grammar, the most flagrant 
errors may be attacked first. Those which have 
logical or other discriminations at the root of 
them, like the lie and lay or shall and will distinc- 
tions and those between adjective and adverb, 
124 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

can be worked with systematically only late in 
the course;^ but this does not mean that certain 
specific idioms cannot well be noted early as 
correct, and drilled in. The method proposed 
for most of the elementary-school study of these 
matters, indeed, is that type forms of this sort 
be drilled into habit to serve as standards for 
reference — something like Matthew Arnold's 
touchstones of poetry. It is of course meant 
that of the list determined on for any grade 
group, the forms should be divided among the 
teachers so that each is responsible for only the 
three to five forms of his own list. 

We may suggest quite tentatively, then, as 
minima in grammar and idiom: (a) for grades 
one to three, / did, I saw, and have seen, I lay, I 
came, I have nH any, you were, I have gone; (b) for 
grades four to six, he said (past tense), I was 

* The minimum of essentials in formal grammar (Cf. (i) and 
(2) below and pp. 156-67) should probably include recogni- 
tion: (i) of the sentence; (2) of the parts of speech; (3) of 
clauses as distinct from phrases, and the chief uses of both; 
(4) of the distinction between main and subordinate proposi- 
tions; (5) of complete verbs; transitive verbs (voice) and 
linking verbs, with objects and predicate attributes;^tense. 

It is intended that simply these points be thoroughly 
understood, always by the test of use in the sentence, and 
without any refinements of sub classification whatever. It 
should be possible to complete in grades eight and nine. 

125 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

lying down, he does nH, an apple, may I?, with you 
and me, do as I do, looks like me, let it go, he 
plays well, and there were three chairs; (c) for 
grades seven to nine, if I were you and if I had 
been, I wish he had been, if he should come, shall 
we go?, the scenery in these places is beautiful; 
the principal parts of nine or ten more verbs; ^ 
agreement of pronouns with everybody, a person, 
etc. For the later high school — if only some 
thirty-six forms have been fully attended to — 
there should remain little of this sort of thing 
besides the further needful systematizing of 
points previously mastered. 

(2) Punctuation 

In the matter of punctuation, since realiza- 
tion of the sentence unit causes such enormous 
trouble (forty-six per cent in the Charters study), 
it seems reasonable to suggest that this receive 
constant and perhaps exclusive attention till it 
is mastered, perhaps till the end of grade six.^ 
However, since quotations and the word of ad- 
dress are natural to use in writing much earlier, 
that topic also may, perhaps, be threshed through 

» Cf. the Bois6 List. 

» Cf. Speaking and Writing English (Lawrence, Mass., 1915), 
by Superintendent Bernard M. Sheridan, pp. 14-17 and 93. 

126 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

in its very simplest form. When the sentence 
is realized and punctuated always as a unit, we 
may attend to its interior punctuation; prob- 
ably by the end of the eighth school year we 
'jhould have completed: (i) the series; (2) gram- 
matically independent words and phrases; (3) 
the compound sentence with a conjunction. 
Probably main statements unconnected gram- 
matically had better be thrown into separate 
sentences at this stage. The children will have 
noted the semicolon in their reading and should 
learn its value; but though some of them may 
use it with more or less success, it is probable 
that its formal teaching should come later. The 
growing use of subordinate clauses in these 
grades usually creates the added difficulty of 
their mispunctuation as sentences, and this 
battle must be firmly fought. Possibly in the 
ninth year we may begin considering the semi- 
colon in its sole important use for high-school 
pupils — to show closer relation than pointing in 
separate sentences, for statements not joined by 
a conjunction. Obviously, real mastery of each 
of these points requires first a grasp of a simple 
grammatical principle underlying, and it is neces- 
sary in approaching each to develop a thorough, 
practical understanding of this principle. 
127 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

For the last three years of high school there 
remains the really difficult matter of fixing in 
habit the distinction between restrictive and 
non-restrictive modifiers, whether phrase or 
clause — adjective, adverbial, or appositional. 
The right marking of appositives is a part of 
this difficulty, and should, I beUeve, hardly 
be attempted much before this point. Punc- 
tuating the adverbial clause before the subject 
belongs here also. The careful study of punc- 
tuation in high school should consist in help- 
ing pupils to apply in numberless cases the prin- 
ciples they have already learned. If a pupil has 
mastered the five or six points here listed, he 
will probably be able to punctuate clearly and 
adequately; other matters of finesse, I am con- 
vinced, can very wisely wait for his college study 
of composition, in case he ever attempts to use 
the subject as an avenue to literary activities. 

0) Spelling and pronunciation 

Spelling words can well be selected from the 

children's own writing, checked by the lists of 

Dr. Ayers and Dr. Jones.^ If simply the *'one 

hundred demons of the Enghsh language" in 

^ L. F. Ayers: A Scale for the M casuremmt of English Spelling, 
Russell Sage Foundation, 1915; W. F. Jones: A Concrete Investi- 
gation of the Materials of English Spelling, South Dakota Uni- 

128 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

the Jones study could be mastered by the end 
of grade six, a really immeasurable load would 
be lifted from the backs of teachers beyond 
that grade. It need hardly be said that the 
words given in spelling must not be all that the 
child understands in reading and may find later 
use for, but only those that it seems worth while 
and reasonably certain that he needs in his nat- 
ural daily life now. If one hundred per cent of 
efficiency in spelling these can really be fixed 
as the pupil's ideal, an interested observation of 
such matters which we will try to induce also 
must avail to maintain his usage of correct forms 
beyond the small vocabulary that we can establish 
irremovably in school spelHng lessons. For pro- 
nunciation, too, there is need for fixing a small 
number of right habits, and surely none for wast- 
ing time to inculcate the ways of speech of one sec- 
tion — the short a's, for example — in preference 
to the acceptable, recorded speech of another. 

{4) Further essential courtesies of speech and 

writing 
Further socially necessary courtesies we may 
well leave, so far as possible, to the developing 

versity, 1913; see also the article on High School Spelling, by 
Mr. Lester of the Hill School, English Journal, vol. v, p. 404. 

129 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

taste of the pupils. The Horace Mann Course 
in Art, Grade One, says: *'No effort is made to 
impose a more refined standard [of color] upon 
the child, for it would not appeal to him." ^ The 
child who is brought to the point of dawning 
taste will grow quickly enough away from the 
raw crudities of his speech and of his environ- 
ment; but where he is living frankly in the stage 
of delight in blatant color and scent and raw- 
ness of life generally, it will do little good to 
preach or prescribe more artistic expression in 
words. This question of taste, also, belongs 
rightly to the following section.^ Yet even in 
the region of forms, a very few of these mat- 
ters should probably be settled upon by the 
consensus of class judgment, guided probably 
by the teacher's suggestions, and thereafter de- 
manded invariably by the pupils — for instance, 
a simple, uniform arrangement of theme- or 
letter-headings, to be developed as we shall see 
later,' a decision as to margin and indention, 
and a like standard in the matter of posture 
and enunciation in speaking. Likewise, what the 
class may be able, with the help and suggestion 

1 Teachers College Elementary School Course, 1908, page 55. 
8 Section B, pp. 153/. 
» Page 138. 

130 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

of their leader, truly to realize as quite undesir- 
able — cheap or smart or the like — may be 
quietly branded by the common judgment as 
unacceptable, and really eliminated. 

But here again, the teacher or supervisor 
with a too-tender linguistic conscience may force 
and demand far too much, with the result that 
really important points — flagrant violations 
and essentials of form — go by the board, and 
nagged, dull, inexpressive children come to be 
the rule. Whatever may be a teacher's personal 
attitude toward expressions rightly listed as 
colloquial, for example, — even though he may 
prefer for his own use on every occasion the 
precise formalities of literary expression, ^ — it 
seems clear that he has no right in grades and 
in high school to proscribe and grub diligently 
out the good colloquialisms in the everyday 
written and oral themes of his pupils. The ques- 
tion appears to turn on whether we wish in 
these grade and high-school years to cultivate 
excellent homely expression to fit the daily, in- 
formal occasions that we all have to meet most 



^ On this point, see the section, " Schoolmasters' English," 
on p. 309 of The Teaching of English by Carpenter, Baker, and 
Scott ; also the chapter on " Schoolmastering the Language," 
in Lounsbury's The Standard of English Usage. 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

often, or a rather bookish and formal type ex- 
clusively. But by colloquial usage I of course 
do not mean vulgarism or barbarism or dialect 
of any sort; I mean good colloquialism. And, 
indeed, it would not probably be necessary to 
urge this point at all if it were not that collo- 
quialism appears to be very commonly regarded, 
even by the makers of studies and courses, as a 
random collection of all sorts of mistakes not 
otherwise classified. Thus, in recent courses one 
finds like I do and he donH side by side with 
such expressions, equally reprehensible, appar- 
ently, and alike proscribed, as lots of and quite 
a few and go slow and company for [sic] dinner. 
This seems truly unfortunate, since it means 
condemnation of whatever is correctly rated 
colloquial and is thus in really good standing, 
and results in its prompt eradication so far as 
courses and teachers can avail against it. The 
question of how to work at the proper time for 
a desirable establishment of power in formal 
and literary expression is discussed later. ^ Cer- 
tainly we desire that children's talk and writing 
should be always couched in reasonably accept- 
able forms; it should be decent in tone and so- 
cially pleasing; but it should not be judged by 
» See pp. i79#- 
132 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

a standard that is ideal in so many respects that 
it is unattainable in any. 

We have noted a merely tentative list of the 
form essentials that should be achieved before 
any other matters of form are attempted in 
given school years or groups of grades. In aver- 
age classes, this division of composition study 
should probably take but a small part of each 
yearns language time. In districts where there 
is excellent home speech, comparatively little 
of this should be needed — sometimes practi- 
cally none on matters of grammar and idiom. 
In districts of foreign speech or especially bad 
English, on the contrary, these same points 
may take most if not all the time that can rea- 
sonably be given to achieving standards of good 
form in expression. It has been suggested that 
the conscientious teacher will gain greatly — 
in particular will have a more useful, complete 
view of the difficulties he has to contend against 
and will realize what he can and cannot possibly 
do — if he keeps under each child's name a list 
of his flagrant mistakes which it seems impera- 
tive to eradicate. Where actual need of forms 
is found in expressing interesting experiences 
and discussing common problems, it can be 
hoped that correction of forms, organized as 

133 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

here suggested, in any school district, might re- 
sult in a few habits functioning automatically, 
not only in but also out of school. The major 
time and attention should certainly be left for 
the suggestive criticism which may help to ele- 
vate the class standards of clearness and posi- 
tive effect in thought and speech and writing.^ 

Treatment of flagrant violations listed for later 
study 

But before we take up the actual method for 
establishing the forms thus listed, it is well to 
attempt answering a sincere question as to the 
practicability of what we have discussed. Some 
teachers will doubtless ask with concern: "But 
what about the many positively wrong forms 
— even flagrantly bad habits of speech — which 
do not appear either in the hst of requirements 
for a given year or in that for supposed earlier 
attainment? Will not these fix themselves im- 
movably in habit?" It may, indeed, happen 
that these do get more firmly fixed, though we 
may perhaps console ourselves with the reflec- 
tion that, after all, children's habits are pretty 
green and plastic if properly handled. How- 
ever v/e answer, the fact certainly remains that 
* See pp. 153/- 
134 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

we can deal in effective, permanent fashion — 
gaining real results in habits — with but a few- 
points of form in a given year, and that at least 
till we have our minima perfectly achieved, we 
had better work away on those only. And again, 
much ignorance and crudeness, at least in pri- 
mary children's expression, will be presently 
outgrown an)rway. 

It should, no doubt, be added that flagrant 
mistakes that are found in the minimal list for 
a given school, but are not up for correction or 
review in that year, — if I had been there, for 
example, or the punctuation of non-restrictive 
elements, — may sometimes be quietly cor- 
rected, usually by the substitution of the right 
form on a pupil's paper or in his speech. I have 
an idea, indeed, that this will be more effective 
in satisf3dng the teacher's scruples than in doing 
much to establish the desired form in the chil- 
dren's habits. And the method must certainly 
be used sparingly, with tremendous inhibition 
of the impulse to tamper, if it is not to become 
a painful agent of stultification. We have a 
difficult way to steer between such correction 
as maims and kills the children's joy in ex- 
pression, on the one hand, and ineffectual, un- 
checked, and unguided babble, on the other. I 
135 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

have suggested that the surest way of helping 
individual teachers is most likely to be by hold- 
ing strictly to the attainment of a few minimum 
requirements. Certainly we have a right to 
demand in addition such common-sense, stern 
inhibition of conscientiousness as shall leave 
complete and vigorous, not uproot and kill, the 
pupils' eager delight in talking and writing in 
the social classroom. And the psychologist now- 
adays suggests that calling attention to a form 
before we are ready to give full, unremitting atten- 
tion to its establishment can probably have no other 
result than confusion and repression. 

Two Stages in Establishing Essential 
Forms 

There remain to be considered the means by 
which minimal form essentials, once agreed upon 
for a given grade or school, can be best handled 
for their complete establishment in habit. For 
a successful attack we may conveniently note 
two stages: first, the child's realization of the 
need and usefulness of the right way for gaining 
his ends; and second, his thorough mastery of 
the form — its establishment, so far as possible, in 
his unconscious habit. The force which we shall 
find most effective in both these processes is the 
136 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

children's eager desire for effective communica- 
tion of what is in them, corrected by the class 
demand for what they all agree to be socially 
acceptable, as a reasonable courtesy which each 
speaker must show if he wants to be heard. 

(i) Realization of the correct form and of its 
value 

Since the matters of form which we are here 
considering are for the most part quite arbitrary 
conventions, at least to the children's view, and 
most of them altogether unknown to the major- 
ity or to all the class, and since violations are 
so common as often to constitute the rule of 
practice, much preparation is generally necessary 
before the class as critics can take charge of de- 
manding any one of these forms in the speech 
and writing of the group members. For the 
first step — often realization of habitual use of a 
wrong form and always of the true usefulness of 
a particular right one — we may attempt to repro- 
duce in class the conditions which probably gave 
rise to the convention we are aiming to establish, 
and by suggestion help the children to discover 
the one that represents correct usage. 

For example, we may let the children them- 
selves decide whether they wish to permit slouch- 

137 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

ing and mumbling in those who speak before 
the class, or to demand good posture, forthright 
address, and clear enunciation. This end may be 
largely secured by praise of excellent manner, 
but probably it will require also condemnation 
of what is bad or unsocial. Similarly in regard 
to headings and margins: those who have tried 
both methods need not be reminded how far 
more effective than rule-of-thumb prescription 
in these matters is giving the children freedom 
to experiment — as they do in drawing, for ex- 
ample — to see what placing of work on their 
papers and what form of heading looks best. 
When the class have made experiments, they 
may compare their own with better work and 
p>erhaps vote on what form is most pleasing — 
if necessary, guided by the teacher's suggestion. 
Thereafter they should be encouraged to de- 
mand observance of that fonn in all cases as a 
requisite social decency. 

In matters of punctuation a somewhat like 
judgment may be secured. We may let the child 
in the primary grades, for instance, try to read 
aloud what he has written at dictation, or, bet- 
ter, as was suggested before,^ let some other 
child read each one's story aloud. The pupil 
1 See pp. 56-57- 

138 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

who has written eagerly of his experiences wants 
his story appreciated. But from the inevitable 
hesitations and stumblings of his reader, he may 
come to realize the failure of what he has done 
to secure its effect of immediate comprehen- 
sion. As another aid, the teacher may write a 
story on the board at the children's dictation 
and ask them for the marks that will make it 
easiest to read. In all these cases the children 
will probably look in their books to note the 
forms they have already understood, but have 
not yet discovered as essential to their own 
uses. A like procedure is possible in the upper 
grades and high school — the discovery of a new 
punctuation form, for instance, through the fail- 
ure of a reader to get the exact meaning in- 
tended. Where a pupil here has tried earnestly 
to express ideas requiring somewhat more com- 
plex marking than he is used to, it may need 
only the honest puzzlement of another child to 
emphasize the need of looking up and using cer- 
tain forms. 

The case with spelling, pronunciation, and 
correct grammar is rather different because 
need can hardly be shown so evidently there. 
Probably the best beginning is to encourage the 
children in being fully alive to new forms in what 

139 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

they read and hear and in discussing these in class. 
Thus, when we find Who ^s been lying in my bed ? 
in The Three Bears we may label this as the right 
form, and sharply contrast it with the wrong 
one that some of the children may use in telling 
the story. The idea must be made quite clear 
that only this right form is acceptable. Most 
forms of this sort are so altogether arbitrary — 
and often, as in the case of spelling, so unrea- 
sonable — that no discussion is generally pos- 
sible save "We say it this way.'' Some degree 
of satisfaction in following conventions, or more 
often the discomfort following their breach, is 
apparently the only force we can invoke here. 

(2) The fixing of essential forms in habit 

Of course, in all these cases the child's real- 
ization that he has need of some sort for a given 
form is but a very short step in the way of its 
estabHshment in his everyday use. It is an ini- 
tial incentive along the way; but this is a hard and 
tedious travel at the best — really almost end- 
less ; and reaKzation of need will rarely be so sharp 
as to prick most grade-school children, at any 
rate, very far along it. What must be accom- 
plished is, of course, the training of hands or 
speech centers, usually with the breaking-down 
140 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

of wrong connections, to do what the child has 
come to see is worth doing — an affair of un- 
ending repetitions where must be no shirking 
of the hard, steady pull, no suffering of excep- 
tions to occur. But we may at the outset note 
the waste of relying upon sheer repetition. When 
dogged determination, on the child's own part 
or that of his teacher, keeps him at his task, such 
a quantity of good energy is used in forcing the 
process forward, or in resisting it, that too little 
apparently is given really to make the form a 
part of the child himself. It is wasteful, grace- 
less grind. And then, in number of repetitions 
the stimulating environment of the home and 
the street has us at a thousand disadvantages. 

Motivation of Drill Lessons 

If we are to insure the highest measure of 
success, then, we must follow Dr. McMurry's 
dictum: "Drills must be made sharp by the 
presence of motive.'' ^ How are we to supply 
the necessary living motive? Means of drill are 
as plenty as blackberries: transcription, dicta- 
tion, filling blanks, learning grammatical names 
and principles, and so on. Doubtless these are 
all more or less valid means of habit formation 

1 How to Study, p. 191. 

141 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

— more, it appears, in proportion as the drills 
themselves have reasons or motives that appeal 
to the child as worth while or interesting. But 
it is probable that the most effective means we 
shall find will be those in which the child's pride 
and interest in what he has to express and in 
doing the thing well is reinforced by the class 
demand and the needs of a social situation. 

In the matter of manuscript form, for in- 
stance, if a child copies from the board the com- 
posite class story that was suggested above, ^ 
because it is in part his own and worth preserv- 
ing and perhaps showing his admiring friends 
at home, he has a motive for doing the thing in 
the best possible form. Under the stimulus of 
such a need for good results, the forms of manu- 
script headings and margins which the class 
choose to adopt and require may simply be copied 
by each child from a model on the board, and 
then tried in the writing of individual themes, 
until the desirable form becomes habitual. Simi- 
larly, effective and appealing subject-matter 
gives force to the suggestion that it be copied 
or written at dictation and preserved for a real 
purpose. All such v/riting will of course have 
to be excellent in its form, and thus will help 
1 See p. 139. 
142 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

to establish necessary habits. It is hardly a 
good plan to break in upon the budding impulse 
to expression with a demand, during assignments, 
that certain forms be held in mind. An unusual 
and horrible example was furnished me by one 
fourth-grade teacher who discoursed and ques- 
tioned for ten minutes on details of heading and 
indention and then baldly announced the theme 
subject. But where it is given in friendly and 
courteous fashion, the caution to the overim- 
pulsive that they take plenty of time to see just 
what they are about before they start to work, 
seems to be frequently in order and useful. 

For establishing right grammatical forms, 
motivated repetition may again be the best key. 
In all the school years, but particularly in the 
early ones, story-telling and dramatization may 
have, among other delectable values, that of 
fixing correct forms the author has used, — for 
instance, the correct verb phrases in The Three 
Bears, already noted. Such live dramatization 
and games as are suggested for learning / have nH 
any, in Speaking and Writing,^ can usually be 
repeated indefinitely; they suggest many pos- 
sible variations to both teachers and pupils, and 
they are most likely to hold absorbed attention 
* Maxwell, Johnston, Barnum, Book i, pp. 1-5. 
143 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

throughout. Indeed, there seems to be every 
reason to trust the effectiveness of good Hve 
games that appeal to the children, for drilling 
on this sort of forms. In the higher grades these 
may often be made into team competitions of 
one sort or another. Once the right forms are 
used freely in play, it seems reasonable to sup- 
pose that they are most likely to crop out spon- 
taneously outside the schoolroom. Again, if a 
child learns by heart verses from the poems he 
studies because he is eager to recite them at 
home or at a school assembly, his work need be 
no stupid grind, but a vigorous and cheerful 
giving of sturdy attention. 

In the six high-school years, of course, there 
appears need to replace these adventitious in- 
terests so far as possible by realization of the 
value and meaning of specific conventions. 
Here, through the study of so much formal 
grammar as can be made to function unmistak- 
ably in his work day by day, a child may come 
to see as much reason as can be found back of 
the arbitrary forms which he must memorize and 
apply. Here too we may succeed in making the 
steady pull of achieving correct forms a process 
of persistent fighting by each child for ground 
he needs in important operations projected by 
144 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

him and his classmates. Given living realiza- 
tion of the use to which he can put a particular 
idiom — the exact meaning of if he was right 
about this, or ercen if he had said that, to fit the 
facts of a situation — it seems clear that any 
sort of quick and vivid drill may be successful 

— repeated as many times as necessary, and 
made effective by brevity and good spirit and 
sharp centering on only one point to be mastered. 

Punctuation seems likely to yield to no other 
attack than this of unceasingly applying each 
principle to nmnberless specific cases. No par- 
ticular urge seems possible except perhaps that 
of appealing subject-matter in the examples 
used — best, doubtless, from the pupils' own 
writing — and the constant pressure of real- 
ization that forms, if they are to be useful, 
must be got right and unquestionably mastered. 
For perhaps the most difficult problem in this 
region — that of establishing a sentence sense 

— Superintendent Sheridan ^ notes the value of 
mastering the idea fully in speech first. Encour- 
agement of the habit of marking the sentence 
end by dropping the voice and pausing, without 
any interruption of and-a and the like, appears 
to be one of the early essentials for teaching oral 

* Speaking and WriimgEttgUsh,ipi>.i/^-i'j. Lawrence, Mass. 

145 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

composition. It may perhaps be achieved best by 
suggestion of ease and deliberateness in talking 
in the social classroom. It must then be discov- 
ered as essential to written work also and unre- 
mittingly applied there, with no avoidable intro- 
duction, meanwhile, of other rules of pointing. 

In the use of all these means for establishing 
necessary form-conventions there is need of 
the teacher's greatest resourcefulness. The chil- 
dren themselves, if they are alive to the problem, 
may often present new and valid ideas for work 
and study, and these are likely to be most use- 
ful; but the teacher must always be ready be- 
forehand with his own attack. And it must be 
brief, but come day after day, and often several 
times a day, on the same form or small group of 
forms, not rapidly scatter attention over three 
or four different points. A good deal has been 
done toward collecting helpful suggestions of this 
sort; but it is after all the ingenuity and the pleas- 
ant spirit of the teacher heartily aiding the class 
at their problem that are most important here. 

Use of Forms in meeting further Real 
Problems 

The one best way of establishing a form perma- 
nently — once it is so far initiated in this fashion 
146 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

that the children feel little uncertainty about 
it — is, I believe, to suggest to the children real 
problems of expressing their own ideas which 
require the particular convention for their best 
accomplishment. These will best be projects 
such as grow naturally from the children's real 
interests. Thus, study and drill on punctuating 
quotations may naturally be followed by prob- 
lems of stories requiring dialogue or of drama- 
tizing parts of stories. Accounts of people's 
characteristic ways, for example, of course de- 
mand that we hear what they say. Here, then, 
are two different sorts of quotation form, for 
dramatic scenes and for stories, including almost 
numberless problems. Since the forms in ques- 
tion have had attention freely and recently called 
to them, the pride of the child in his own work 
may first be enlisted for thorough proof-reading,^ 
and, once he has accomplished this to the best 
of his ability, the pride of the class may next be 
called on for checking up his work. We should, 
however, see to it even then that the child him- 
self corrects his mistakes unaided if he possibly 
can do so. 

1 See chap, iii, p. 56. 



147 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

Enlisting Cooperation on Specitic Form 
Matters 

It is probable that the usefulness of this type 
of work could be enormously increased if the 
parents of each child, and in departmental work, 
certainly, every one of his teachers, were to re- 
ceive a card stating the form matter which the 
class was just then working to establish, and 
probably those also which were supposedly fixed 
in habit already, and asking that these specific 
points receive attention outside the English 
classroom also. Of course this would have to 
be skillfully maneuvered. But where the list 
was very brief and definite, help from many par- 
ents and from all other teachers should be pos- 
sible to secure.^ In any case, it should certainly 
be possible, once we make the list of matters to 
be achieved each year really one of a few mini- 
mum essentials, and not a numberless confusing 
array, actually to fix them in habit in the course 
of a school year without diverting necessary 
interest and attention from what is the true 

* The most valuable chapter in that interesting book, Pro- 
fessor R. W. Brown's How the French Boy Learns to Writer 
appears to me to be his discussion of " Organized Language 
Tradition " (chap. viii). 

148 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

central purpose of composition, the individual 
organization and statement of experience. 

The Time Necessary for fixing an 
Essential Form 
The length of time that we must spend on 
concentrated attention to any form is not diffi- 
cult to determine. Unswerving fixation on each 
specific point should probably continue till every 
pupil in the class either never uses the wrong 
form even in free and heated discussion, or, if 
he does, immediately recognizes the mistake 
without any correction from outside — show 
of hands or the like. The erring will often be 
helped sufficiently by a sensation of lowered 
class temperature, so sharp that even the least 
sensitive cannot escape it. The class themselves, 
that is, will have come to demand the newly 
acquired correct form, and will ruthlessly pro- 
scribe as inexcusable all ignorance or heedless- 
ness. So, until, one by one, each of the small 
list of forms drilled upon and required in each 
grade is so fully fixed, we should encourage the 
children in their criticism to make ruthless de- 
mands. The device recently suggested in the 
English Journaly^ of having all children look for 
* Pauline Cope, "Round Table," February, 1916 (vol. v, p. 134). 
149 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

such violations by any member of the group any- 
where and report complete statements and names, 
and then of deputing committees to write out 
all such reports on the blackboard each week, 
should be successful in proportion as few and 
specific points are looked for. Upon this taking 
over by the group of standards discovered to be 
correct and essential, the teaching of composi- 
tion may most surely rely for their thorough 
estabhshment. It is no doubt obvious how very 
few form matters in any school year can be 
really brought to the point of complete absorp- 
tion into the class consciousness and into the 
habitual reactions of each child. But I venture 
to insist that no other result is worth much con- 
sideration in this problem of essential forms. 

The aim of the whole study of forms is intelli- 
gent seK-correction by every child without the 
aid of any one else. This should of course apply 
to both his oral and written form equally. The 
suggestion ^ that no correction marks be placed 
on papers certainly seems reasonable and neces- 
sary as regards these matters which we have 
thus firmly established. Until a child has come 
first to the point of making his own correc- 
tions in proof- reading, and even beyond that, 

1 Cf. chap. Ill, p. 60. 

150 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

to actually checking the mistake before it ap- 
pears, attention to the form in question has not 
gone far enough in his case. And I believe that 
such one hundred per cent attainment in the 
small list of forms for each year should be de- 
manded of every normal child. Only in this way 
can each teacher know where to start toward 
accomplishing his particular share. This may 
seem almost a policy of blood and iron; but pro- 
vided the list is limited and specific enough, we 
need hardly inflict outrage on the originaUty or 
spontaneity of any youngster. Its clearness and 
practical possibility of attainment should make 
such a standard a salutary influence. 

It is sufficiently obvious that some thirty-six 
errors in grammar and idiom, a very short list 
of punctuation rules, and a minimum require- 
ment in spelling, form of manuscript and of oral 
address, and the like are a long way from com- 
prising all the endless hst of matters which are 
daily and hourly corrected in most grades and 
high schools. And it is, of course, optional with 
school and teacher to select as minima whatever 
matters seem fully essential. It is here suggested 
simply that the choice of such a list be made 
always in the widest attainable view of what is 

151 



.J 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

acceptable English to-day and in practical knowl- 
edge of what children can actually, fully accom- 
plish in given time and under given conditions. 
We have canvassed, so far, the jorm contentions 
which may be regarded as making composition 
minimally acceptable and which children in 
average school conditions can actually master. 
Beyond these of course lies the vast range of 
matters, certainly quite as important, for sug- 
gestive criticism and, through this, gradual 
development of more clear and forceful and 
artistic expression. These we shall discuss in 
the section following. The basis of the division 
between the two types seems unmistakably 
useful — that forms and matters of greater 
effectiveness in expression come from different 
sources and are unlikely to be achieved by the 
same treatment. It is only, then, a few conven- 
tions necessary to decent social speech and writ- 
ing, not any more positive attainments, that 
we have considered in this section (A). It is 
hoped that the mode of treatment suggested — 
keeping hard at one thing at a time — may be 
effectual in getting these matters out of the way 
with the most swiftness and least pother, so 
that we can give major attention in composition 
classes to more positive ideals. 
152 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

B. THE DEVELOPMENT OF EFFECTIVENESS 

IN SENTENCE-BUILDING AND IN 

WORD CHOICES 

Beyond the small region of absolute forni re- 
quirements already canvassed there is, of course, 
a long and hard way to travel toward really 
effective expression. For children's speech and 
writing, even were it fully correct, is necessarily 
awkward and inaccurate and rawly crude. It 
is now redundant, and now gaping for needed 
words. It has next to no effectiveness in relat- 
ing ideas, but is infantile either in stringing sen- 
tences together or in chopping them short. It 
is too often crass and cheap and tasteless. All 
this, of course, is simply sajdng that a child's tools 
are very blunt. He sees details keenly, but wav- 
eringly — not of course with the sweep and 
completeness of the trained observer; and his 
verbal expression naturally lags far behind his 
ideas. 

Reasons for Differentiating 

Form conventions and 
Modes of positive effectiveness 

The commonest tendency in the study of 
wording and sentence-building in composition 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

classes, just as we have seen in the matter of 
prescribing forms, has been to proceed by de- 
liberate inculcation of more apt and accurate 
words and more expressive sentence-structure. 
I believe, however, that the problem of diction 
and of sentences is so radically different from 
that of form estabHshment as to require a radi- 
cally different method. On the one hand are 
form conventions requiring full establishment 
in habit; on the other, principles oi moee clear 
and vigorous and beautiful statement, demand- 
ing ordered growth in a child's thought-power 
and appreciations before he can make effective 
use of them. There are naturally many border 
forms difficult if not impossible to classify; but 
the basic distinction seems to be valid and prac- 
ticable. 

As we shall see in considering the development 
of more effective wording and structure, the 
child here again makes the discovery — for in- 
stance, in regard to the placing of modifiers — 
that a given way of expression has not had the 
effect he desired, whether because the thing 
was not entirely clear or because it was not most 
forcefully and aptly said. He may have to make 
this discovery repeatedly, as he has done in using 
unacceptable forms, before he is roused to see 

154 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

that a certain useful principle is essential to his 
success at this point. Very much as in the study 
of organization, we may now proceed to help 
him discover and formulate such principles as 
he can come at - — as of need of specific and apt 
wording or of clear reference or of more force- 
ful relation of ideas. But unlike the rules of end- 
punctuation of sentences, for example, the appli- 
cation of any one of the principles so derived 
appears to require invariably, in the meeting 
of each particular problem in expression, live 
and conscious search for the best solution — 
for the most accurate and vivid word or the 
strongest construction. In other words, we have 
to deal here not with exact rules that we can 
learn to apply automatically, but with wise 
counsels which we must adapt to the needs of 
each new situation; and probably no two cases 
ever respond to precisely the same treatment. 
It seems clear that none of the matters that re- 
main to be considered can ever become affairs of 
imconscious spinal reaction or muscle memory, 
as apparently most form conventions can do. 
Patient, multitudinous application of each prin- 
ciple is indeed necessary. However, as the aim 
here is not to fix habits, but to develop rapidity 
and sureness in dealing with original problems 

155 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

of expression, the effective method of work will 
differ also. 

Three Remaining Types of Expressional 
Ability 

The remaining problems of composition teach- 
ing which we shall discuss under this general 
topic of gaining effectiveness in expression may- 
be conveniently grouped into three tjrpes: The 
first is growth in abihty to construct transpar- 
ently clear and forceful sentences. The second 
is achievement of accuracy in the choice of 
words to convey the exact idea. The third is 
development of true artistry in fitting words 
and phrases simply and aptly to their purpose. 
Attainment in all these, it is maintained, must 
be the expression of increase in both mental 
keenness of perceiving ideas and relations, and 
fineness of tact and taste in expressing them. 

The Development of Effective Thought- 
Relation IN Sentences 

First as to sentence construction: For setting 
out in this, we may well wait till the child, with 
the increasing complexity of his experience, 
finds need of expressing ideas in more close and 
accurate relation. In the course of earnest efforts 
IS6 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

to make a point clear, he may presently find that 
his meaning really has not been grasped, per- 
haps because his sentence is clumsy or indistinct. 
Or we may need sometimes to direct the chil- 
dren's attention specifically to such weaknesses 
in expression as illogical sentence planning or 
thought-relation, since they may else continue 
for too long a time to accept very rough equiva- 
lents for accuracy and clearness. But here we 
need most especially to note that it is only as 
children succeed in grasping and realizing more 
close and varied relations in thought that they 
can see the need of increasing their range and 
power in construction of sentences to express it. 
For example, we may take what is perhaps 
the most important and the least regarded sen- 
tence principle, that of accurate relation, whether 
coordination or subordination of ideas. Most 
children apparently think chiefly in a stringy 
fashion, and their method of expression is chiefly 
a chain of and and so sentences or chopped-apart 
simple ones, for a long time after their teachers 
set to work to check and correct them for it. 
The result is that arbitrary prescription and 
correction are too likely to be employed for 
carrying the point. But once the majority of 
the pupils can be expected to use complex sen- 

157 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

tences freely and naturally and to appreciate 
the closer relations shown by this type, definite 
studies in relating thoughts in numerous ways 
besides the compound type may be made most 
valuable. I do not of course mean that many 
children should not or will not use such sen- 
tences earlier, but merely that specific class at- 
tention to developing the principle will hardly 
be most useful before this. At the proper time, 
not, I think, much before the ninth school year, 
we may help to discover weakness of effect in 
sentences used by the children themselves, and 
with this, various specific ways in which thoughts 
and ideas may be put together in sentences — 
an essential bit of thorough grammar study. 

Then, to help this in functioning in the chil- 
dren's own speaking and writing, useful exercises 
may be given in sentence-massing — for in- 
stance, taking two or three familiar statements 
in clear relation and combining them in various 
ways, to show the generally superior effect of 
the complex form or the simple type with its 
less important thought expressed in a phrase. 
In such study it is most essential of all to note 
the necessity of subordinating the really minor 
element; this point appears to be often slighted. 
We may next encourage children to experiment 

158 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

freely in the problem and to discover from the 
class judgment what effect they gain. Above 
all, we may lead the class to watch for and com- 
mend ways which their classmates achieve of 
constructing strong and clear sentences, or 
cases in what they read or hear in which the 
meaning is given unmistakably and with the 
right impact. Thus, through the untiring study 
of this principle illustrated by examples from 
the best work that the children come in contact 
with and from their own best expression, we may 
bring them to a point where they criticize keenly, 
but fairly, cases of stringy or babyishly short 
sentences, weak coordination with and or sOy 
and false subordination of important elements. 
The child thus criticized may try to make his 
sentence better, or he may call on his critic for 
help. But it appears to be only through long, 
patient study and revision of this sort that a 
child masters any point of sentence structure 
and makes it thoroughly useful to him. 

Principles of effective sentence-structure 

Such study as this of sentence-relation, lead- 
ing to thorough and conscious but, so far as 
may be, unhampering attention to each matter 
in the child's everyday speech and writing, is 

159 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

needed for handling each of various principles 
of sentence structure. If only five such prin- 
ciples could be taken up in the grammar grades 
and high school, each one till it was mastered 
reasonably for practical use, I believe that chil- 
dren would come out of the study with some real 
power of thinking and building effective sen- 
tences and with a great corresponding gain in 
abihty to see logical relations of ideas. We may 
consider the necessary points in this order; 

(i) Placing of modifiers and reference of pro- 
nouns for unmistakable clearness — begun 
perhaps in grade six or seven. We may point 

^ out to children that matters of this sort, even 
when they are possible to be understood, are 
not well handled when there is either real con- 
fusion on the reader's part or, worse still, 
when he turns aside from the ideas to note an 
awkwardness or a bit of unintended humor — 
Besant's clumsy "He admonished perpetually 
the boys to keep still," or "The can-washing 
was not always done very well by the farmers, 
so now the dairy washes all of them." These 
points are generally, I believe, given enough 
attention in most present courses. 

(2) Effecting clear and strong relation of sentence- 
elements — already discussed. This includes 
all that is usually presented under sentence 
160 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

unity, and more. It may be stated: Thoughts 
should be clearly and strongly related, in sep- 
arate sentences, in parts of a compound sen- 
tence, or in subordinate clauses or phrases. 
As perhaps the chief principle of logical sen- 
tence-structure this appears to need the most 
time, beginning, probably, about grade nine. 

(3) Holding to sentence plan.^ This means simply 
knowing what the sentence subject is — what 
one is talking about — and remembering. It 
avoids, At the age of six, my grandparents died. 
He was deaf, due to measles, and An earthquake 
is when — , as well as all the troubles traced 
to loose participles and other verbals. This 
principle may appear in grade nine or ten. 

(4) Putting in striking places the elements that 
deserve most emphasis — at the end or the 
crest of the sentence or out of their normal 
order; this last appears to be the secret of the 
force in periodic sentences. Attention to it 
probably pays little before the second or third 
year of the high school. 

(5) Building like ideas alike — parallelism of con- 
struction; as an especially nice refinement of 
thinking, this may best receive attention rather 
later than (4). 

These, I believe, are the important principles 

of sentence-structure — matters distinct enough 

from the arbitrary rules of case and agreement 

* Cf. Baldwin, Writing and Speaking, p. 4- 

161 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

and idiomatic phrasing previously discussed, be- 
cause they are both discovered and applied in 
conscious discrimination of thought-relations. 

Organizing and limiting the study of sentence- 
structure 

It is, I think, fairly obvious that no mere mem- 
orizing and reciting and chance application of 
these construction principles, one after another, 
can be expected to do much good. That we do 
not compass their reasonable mastery in many 
high-school English courses is probably due most 
of all to the fact that no one principle is recog- 
nized as sufficiently important to merit sole 
consideration for a long enough time. To be 
sure, formal recognition of these principles and 
of particular type-examples can be readily se- 
cured in the grades where it has been suggested 
that they be introduced; and this is commonly 
enough achieved. The essential mastery, how- 
ever, of which this is but a preliminary process, 
means thorough and unremitting practice on 
each principle. We need to apply each one in 
numerous exercises in sentence building; and 
we can make these vigorous and interesting in 
so far as a child realizes the need of firmer and 
clearer sentences in his own expression. This is 
162 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

not an affair of a few days; it requires rather all 
winter and even several severe successive win- 
ters to fix a single ideal of structure. But, in- 
complete as our results must be in grades and 
high school, I believe we shall find that work 
like this is quite decidedly worth while. 

We may note briefly also the due and essen- 
tial Hmits to such study. Just as in the correc- 
tion of form errors, the teacher must take most 
particular care that neither he nor the class 
critics are permitted to become heckling and 
finicking in their criticism and attempts at bet- 
ter sentences. We dare not permit ourselves to 
forget that children's minds are not adult and 
mature, that their sentences will almost always 
be far less exact and finished than we could de- 
sire, and that to expect anything else, far less 
to demand it, is in the highest degree harmful 
and unprofitable. We may, for instance, find con- 
stant temptation to work toward niceties of parallel 
structure in grades where it is probable that the 
pupils are not ready for so precise a form; it is 
doubtful if many of them even of high-school 
age can handle it at all. It is too easy, also, to 
become over-careful and higgling about accurate 
pronoun reference and modifier-placing — mat- 
ters which we could express more logically our- 
163 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

selves, but which are clear enough so far as the 
children can honestly see.^ The worst result 
that could possibly be gained from such study 
is the overeasy one of making a class finical and 
nagging in tearing apart each other's sentences, 
petty in pursuit of trivialities, lost to the ideal 
of honest appraisal of the interest in the projects 
that their classmates present. If we are to avoid 
this, we must, I believe, realize fully that the sug- 
gestions about sentence building which we study 
are not precepts to be applied arbitrarily to any 
situation whatever, but matters of judging bet- 
ter and -worse effect — even though sometimes 
much better or very much worse. The chil- 
dren's work must be valued always by their 
actual success in attaining their aim in the social 
class, and this must be always an audience of 
keen but fair and true cooperators who appreciate 
the best workmanship in expression. We must 
encourage prompt condemnation of guerrilla 
pettifogging wherever we discover signs of it. 
Finally, ideas to express and real freedom and 
naturalness and readiness in expressing them 
are, we have been constantly insisting, far more 
important in grades and high school than any 

1 Cf. Palmer's translation of the Odyssey. Introduction, 
p. xxiv. 

164 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

sentence- technique, however finished . Only when 
the necessary principles are applied in revising 
none but cases which the class can realize as 
distinctly lacking in clearness and vigor, then 
can we be sure that the exercise may really help 
in increasing power of thought and expression, 
and not in futile harrying. The teacher's judg- 
ment is nowhere more important, and it seems 
quite evident that it must, if it is to be most 
valuable, be based in thorough realization of the 
class needs and capabilities. 

As to the value of such long and determined 
but carefully delimited campaigns as we have 
been considering for the mastery of sentence 
principles: We have noted that true gains are 
probably to be achieved only by study instituted 
because the children have come or have been 
brought to realize that their sentences lack 
ejffect and that they have need of a given struc- 
tural principle. Thus begun, such study needs 
to be untiringly carried out, by first developing 
clear and simple principles and then applying 
them in numberless cases of construction and 
revision — mostly of the children's own work — 
to practical conquest of means of effect. Mas- 
tery of a few basic ideas in this fashion may 
mean a quite notable contribution to the child's 
i6s 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

conquest of his own mind. I do not mean that we 
can secure for children such adult mastery of 
these problems as is represented in the ability of 
the trained and gifted writer to see keenly and 
instantly what ideas in his mind belong in one 
sentence, what ones should gain chief effect by 
being given principal rank, and by what types 
of relation and structure he can best express the 
complex. The orator Fox, we are told in Pro- 
fessor Palmer's essay, ^ could "throw himself 
headlong into the midst of a sentence, trusting 
to God Almighty to get him out." But most of 
us who try it from day to day know from our 
failures that this is an affair of many more years' 
painstaking and thoughtful experience than can 
be even realized by the high-school pupil. ^ The 
point for him is simply that through continued 
heedful notice of excellent sentences and through 
other pupils' criticism of his failures in effect, 
he may gain some conscious ability to think the 
relations of ideas and the best ways of express- 
ing these before writing or speaking. That this 
shall not become an affair of hampering and 
overprecise deliberation, but a gradual and 

* Self -Cultivation in English, p. i6. 

2 " Will you tell me, ' Oh, — any one can write prose pass- 
ably well '? Can he, indeed? — can you, sir? " — Quiller-Couch^ 
On the Art of Writing, p. 30. 

166 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

healthy growth in clearness and robustness and 
readiness of expression, must rest almost entirely 
with the common sense of the individual teacher 
in governing and directing the class criticism 
and keeping it sound and good-spirited. 

Achievement of Accuracy in fitting 
Words to Ideas 

For gaining accuracy in word choices — finding 
those that fit the precise idea exactly — much 
the same process of growth is necessary. We 
of course want children's vocabularies to grow 
with their widening experience, so that, as 
they look sharply into that experience and dis- 
criminate among their new ideas more exactly, 
they may be more ready with terms for express- 
ing themselves truly and effectively about it. 
But here it seems even more necessary to in- 
sist that pointing out differences between words 
must be perfectly meaningless except where 
the child realizes his inaccuracy as deterrent 
in some fashion — either to his own clear think- 
ing or, more usually, to his making himself 
clear to his audience. Further, such processes 
as correction of a child's words and prescrip- 
tion of new ones must be altogether futile un- 
less the child has some specific experience as 
167 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

a basis for seeing the difference and thus can ap- 
preciate how one word is actually more useful 
and exact than the other. That is, as in the case 
of sentences, growing keenness of thought must 
precede the demand for a new expression. To 
be sure, a direct route to making thought keener 
is apparently helping achieve understanding of 
distinctions in meaning among words. But it 
is likely that we have oftenest worked quite 
too hard on that end of the problem, without 
making sure that the discriminations we have 
urged were both quite comprehensible and truly 
useful to our pupils. We have too long contin- 
ued cheerfully to assume that enforcing dis- 
tinctions between terms like verse and stanza — 
apparently a mere technical distinction with- 
out authority in present good usage, in spite of 
the determined stand of many a purist — is a 
gain in vocabulary or mental keenness or both. 
Many lessons suggested and taught seem to 
add only fog and confusion. Where lists of de- 
scriptive or appreciative words are given a 
child, it would seem to require a rather robust 
idea of what he wants to say, a real experience 
to express — something that is not at hand in 
too many cases of this sort — and it would also 
appear to demand sincere guidance and great 
i68 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

judgment on the teacher's part to keep a pupiPs 
composition from becoming a sickly mess of 
verbiage. To illustrate a common sort of word- 
study by an actual example: A primary teacher, 
coming upon the word dwell in the children's read- 
ing lesson, remarked, ''Here's a nice word for 
you to use, children." And the children, some 
of them, used it. This might, I admit, have 
been worse; the teacher might have hit upon 
abide, which is rather less possible to find real 
use for; or she might have prescribed and ham- 
mered-in the word with the idea of forcibly feed- 
ing gaunt young vocabularies; these things also 
have been known to occur. But was n't her per- 
formance at best a wasteful misdirection of the 
children's energies? Does the word dwell rep- 
resent a possibly valid distinction, or add any- 
thing, except a pretty archaic flavor, to chil- 
dren's expression? And again, — a consideration 
that appears vastly more important, — is n't it 
often the scorn with which healthy-minded 
children regard this sort of thing that makes 
most of them relapse into content with fourth- 
grade vocabularies, even for writing university 
freshman themes? This last point seems to me 
particularly well worth looking into. 

Our attempts to aid children's development in 
169 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

these regions should, of course, have their begin- 
ning in the careful study of children's own attempts 
to express their real experience and of the class 
criticism of that expression. On this basis we will 
best give major attention to encouraging the child 
in new and absorbing interests in exploration and 
adventure and in careful attempts to give the 
group of his friends the clearest possible view of his 
new ideas. Thus we first of all motivate the study 
of new words by the child's own discovery that he 
needs better and sharper tools for fashioning 
clearly and presenting ideas inchoate in his mind. 
He will then best attain his desired ends by 
observing carefully the best expression of like 
ideas which he can discover. We may need 
simply to direct him where to find matter whose 
ideas and statement are within his comprehen- 
sion and related to his needs. But it seems es- 
sential also to awaken in him a constantly keener 
interest in new words that appear in all his 
reading and in the speech of those about him. 
We can better say preserve and widen this inter- 
est; for it is so natural and sharp in little chil- 
dren — is so clearly a means of their growing 
out of the stage where all animals are bow-wows 
to the surprisingly large vocabulary of average 
first- and second-graders — that it must surely 
170 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

be very bad handling which could dull it com- 
pletely. Yet, somehow, it does apparently dis- 
appear before most children enter high school. 
If a child is but kept always eager to get full 
meaning out of useful words he comes upon — 
to visualize them, and find the black shape of 
their letters stuffed with new ideas which he 
is free to explore, and with a history and inter- 
esting relationships — I think we need only to 
encourage and direct, never to compel or even 
urge most youngsters to reach a really tremen- 
dous extension of experiences and powers of ac- 
curate expression year b)^ year. The teacher will 
also do well, provided he has taste and discrimi- 
nation, to employ in his own speaking the widest 
possible variety of usable and right words, keep- 
ing always within the range of possible needs of 
his pupils. He may do this with avowed inten- 
tion, but he must take pains to make clear the 
precise use of new words he introduces. 

We may, then, help the child to get a real 
personal experience out of new words — to real- 
ize them and relate them into his life. If a 
teacher asks often, "What does this word make 
you see? Does it remind you of anything you 
have seen yourself?" and the like, though he 
may apparently move tangent to the logical de- 
171 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

velopment of story or lesson, he can, I believe, 
succeed in bringing back to it more of under- 
standing and appreciation than would otherwise 
be possible. And there is of course place and 
need, in both grades and high school, to do this 
sort of thing in special word-study periods, using 
as material particularly well- worded sentences — 
best of all from the work of the class. Deriving 
the exact meanings of shy and nimble and fangs 
and their differences from less expressive and 
specific words which the children have used for 
lack of better must depend on making definite 
associations with ideas that the child has from 
previous experiences. By making such asso- 
ciations very clear and real, we may have good 
hope that he will then use the words naturally 
in useful and natural fashion, without any pre- 
scription at all. Indeed, as a child grows in this 
sincere interest in the marvelous things that 
words can reveal, there may be need rather to 
hold in his vagaries and enthusiasms with atten- 
tion to the demands of true effectiveness, whether 
tested through actual comprehension by his 
audience or his own and their good taste. But 
the attempt to use true and specific words de- 
serves always to be stirred and encouraged, 
even when its results seem poor or grotesque. 
172 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

All this, of course, means many pleasant and 
cheerful uses of the dictionary when the chil- 
dren are ready for this — not a stern and un- 
gracious reference to it for the spelling of words 
merely. It may mean also happy excursions 
into the history of common expressions. The de- 
light of natural children in the original meanings 
of baffle and gingerly, for instance, should go far 
to help them in adding such interesting and use- 
ful words to their vocabularies. A most fruit- 
ful study of word-use consists in having written 
on the blackboard before the class all the spe- 
cific equivalents they can suggest for a general 
word like walked: strode, ambled , waddled, and 
so on almost indefinitely.^ The children here 
generally gain a pleasant sense that their word- 
store for definite expression is far wider than they 
have supposed and has delightful possibilities. 
And such intense interest and understanding of 
the possibilities of words, once gained — or kept 
— can hardly escape reaction in better command 
of ideas and clearer realization of new experiences. 

Of course there is here again the possibiHty of 

carrying study and criticism too far; we need 

an accurate and understanding touch with our 

pupils if we wish to stop before this ceases to 

* Cf. Baldwin, Writing and Speaking, pp. 146-48. 

173 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

serve a useful purpose and becomes mere jug- 
glery. If it is to remain true and sound and fruit- 
ful, it must always have specific reference to chil- 
dren's real problems of speech and writing. And 
provided it has this relation, we need rarely, I 
think, prescribe or even suggest lists of words 
usable in meeting a descriptive or other prob- 
lem. The needs of the situation and the creative 
and helpful spirit of the class criticism should 
be sufficient for gaining quite satisfactory re- 
sults. The ends we most desire here may be 
stated as (i) a sense, gradually evolving out of 
the vague inaccuracy of children's minds, of 
need for exact, specific words; and (2) a defin- 
itely directed habit of observing new words — 
or, better still, a sense of the usefulness of known 
expressions to one's own expressional purposes 
every day. That this is more valuable to 
gain than any amount of specific insistence on 
particular discriminations — that it is indeed 
their only deeply important fruition, scarcely 
appears to need argument. 

Gaining Aptness and Artistry in Word 
Choices 

But Just as words must be perfectly fitted to 
the meaning a child wants to convey, so they 
174 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

must also be fitted to his audience or readers 
and to the exact purpose he has in hand — an 
affair of artistry. This is perhaps a more diffi- 
cult subject even than the other; and I certainly 
believe that the bad results of pecking and 
nagging correction are worse in these matters of 
taste than in any other. We have noticed that 
in a similar domain, that of taste in color and 
design, good courses are built on a principle 
which appears to be equally important to Eng- 
lish teachers. The Horace Mann School Course in 
Art,^ in discussing how to better the child's 
"elemental aesthetic preferences, '^ explains the 
matter in this way: "Decorations that have good 
coloring are shown to him, and he compares his 
designs with these and criticizes his own. He 
is also shown the effect of combining tones of 
the same color, and of a touch of black or dark 
brown in certain combinations. In this way he 
gradually grows away from the use and from 
joy in the use of crude colors. By the end of the 
first year many children show a considerable de- 
gree of feeling and taste in their selections and 
combinations. '^ ^ In composition, on the other 
hand, we have probably had too much prescrip- 

^ Teachers College Elementary School Course, 1908, Grade I, 
p. 55. 2 Q^ Sargent's Fine and Industrial Arts, pp. 2y jff. 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

tion of opinion by teacher and text. But re- 
construction of the child's taste seems not to ac- 
complish itself in that way. I realize, of course, 
that many children's preferences in words seem 
quite too raw and crude for a sensitive teacher 
to endure tamely; but so also is the boy's corre- 
sponding taste in neckties and the girl's in scents. 
To elevate these is a matter of deeper, more 
difficult requirements than are met by deter- 
mined and horrified proscription of slang. If we 
must have proscription, we have noted that it 
may be most effectively secured through the 
deliberate class judgment and not through the 
insistence of the teacher alone. Certain specific 
crudities of expression may doubtless be thus 
determined against by the class judgment and 
ranked with such unacceptable forms as "you 
was." But after all, the success of an attempt 
to elevate taste must probably depend rather 
upon tactful suggestion and upon help through 
the influence of excellent speech and writing. 

We may, then, encourage the child and his 
cooperators to look consciously for the most apt 
and vigorous and fine expression of their ideas. 
What we should try thus to establish is a sense 
of better personal satisfactions as well as stronger 
effects to be had from careful attention to the 
176 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

words that say a thing most satisf yingly, whether 
in recitations or in writing verse. But it is prob- 
ably of no more effect to inveigh against sur- 
face manifestations of raw taste or heedless- 
ness of art, whether cheapness or slovenHness 
in word choices, than it would be to forcibly 
fasten on the boy a black tie instead of the green 
and purple one he prefers, and require him to 
wear it in the hope that he would come to like 
it. It seems that we shall be far more likely to 
succeed if we let him take his choice among 
haberdashery with a generous amount of bright 
but really good color and thus come naturally 
toward better judgments of his own in the matter. 

Forces working toward artistic expression 

There seems no reason to question that the 
prime force in these attempts to increase chil- 
dren's taste should be the hearing and reading 
and study of beautiful expression, just as their 
level of appreciating exquisite line and color 
may be raised in part by the study of beautiful 
pictures or designs. There is of course — what 
is always spoken of in this connection but too 
rarely used — the influence of such fine and 
rhythmic English as the Bible and the Book of 
Common Prayer and the most simple and per- 
177 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

feet poetry read day by day. And, of course, 

— probably more directly influencing them, — 
there should be the example of the teacher's good, 
vigorous speech — certainly not cheapened by 
what is vulgar in slang or in affectation, nor 
priggishly precise and pseudo-literary — and of 
the best artistry in the work of other children. 
Yet we cannot be sure of gaining the most effect 
unless we undertake definite study of good 
literature, by which we may perhaps be per- 
mitted to mean all fine and effective expression, 
by the children as well as by the masters. We 
need to examine numberless words and compari- 
sons such as the child himself may find useful 
for making his expression vivid and artistic. 
Attention to bringing out all the picture in 
phrases like Lanier's "the humped and fishy 
sea'' and "the huge and huddling sea" often 
repays us most richly. Old Ironsides, again, 
contains many examples of effective phrasing. 
If we ask the children what they see when they 
read such lines as "the meteor of the ocean air" 
and "the eagle of the sea," and what the poet 
meant to suggest by the comparisons, we find 
them discovering all sorts of interesting things 

— many of these, perhaps, quite absent from 
the writer's mind, but almost all valid and in- 

178 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

teresting. If they really get the ideas suggested 
by such words — see the pictures and hear the 
sounds that the poem suggests of sea-battle in 
storm — they may gain not alone a thorough 
and hearty appreciation of the verses and a vivid 
experience, but a new idea of the possibilities 
of quite simple words and comparisons which 
cannot but affect their raw ways of expression.^ 
And then we need to encourage them, both 
by commendations and by suggestions as to 
bettering their own attempts at expression, to 
make use of what they find pleasing — this cer- 
tainly not a process of prescription and insis- 
tence, but of gradually evolving standards 
chosen and followed both by the group and by 
each child for himself. In directing this growth, 
the teacher has most need to see to it deter- 
minedly that he does not foist his mere predilec- 
tions upon the children as ideals. 

Toward adapting expression to audience and 
purpose 

A final point in this study of taste in words 
is considering how to adapt expression to its 

' Hay ward's The Lesson in Appreciation is excellent on this 
point. The subject of poetic expression is beautifully presented 
in Max Eastznan's The Enjoyment of Poetry. 

179 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

purpose. When a child studies Irving happily, 
he can hardly escape the suggestion of using cer- 
tain archaic or heavily bookish expressions, in 
retelling the story or in writing one of his own. 
His classmates may agree that expressions like 
cognomen and wight and inveterate propensity 
give the right flavor to a story of antique spirit 
and humor, and are pleasant too to try in story- 
telling. Many delightful experiments may thus 
be made throughout the grades — in the proper 
speech for giants and enchanted animals and 
Revolutionary heroes. But the children may 
also note specifically that wording suitable to 
cases like these by no means fits simple every- 
day expression. Thus they may come to make 
still more important studies in adapting what 
they have to say to its most effective expression 
for a particular audience. They may discover 
that what one uses for letters to other children 
is n^t altogether the thing for a formal occa- 
sion, and that an invitation to the superintendent 
or one's aunt for a special school celebration 
will be worded differently from the way they 
ask a neighbor over to play. The experiments 
already suggested ^ in imagining the class to be 
various dignified bodies and in actually address- 
1 Chap. I, p. 31. 
180 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

ing other groups of people, whether in speech 
or in writing, may all be excellent; and as the 
children become interested in the attempts to 
judge a piece of work as it would actually be 
received in a given situation, they may grow to 
understand that story or explanation or plea must 
fit its purpose not alone in clearness but in apt- 
ness of expression. They should discover that 
although successful expression by no means 
comes flatly down to its hearers' level in vul- 
garity or incorrectness, for instance, yet it must 
be suited to their appreciation. Lincoln's leg- 
endary resolve that his expression should always 
be understandable by such an unlettered boy as 
he was did not mean, as any one can find by 
reading his unsurpassed prose, that he confined 
himself to words of two syllables or to rough 
and elemental ideas; but his speech and writing 
were both transparently understandable, and 
vigorously, richly beautiful. The schoolmaster 
Roger Ascham states what seems a most appro- 
priate ideal for the teacher: **He that wyll wryte 
well in any tongue must followe thys council 
of Aristotle, to speake as the comon people do, 
to think as wise men do." ^ 

1 From his Toxophilus, quoted in Krapp's Modern English^ 
p. 245- . 

l8l 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

There seems to be much in this for English 
teachers to chew upon. We are rather too apt 
to neglect the careful cultivation of homely ex- 
pressions — such, for instance, as Professor Bald- 
win Hsts in his Writing and Speaking ^ — the 
expressions that give life to language without 
transgressing in the way of vulgarity and crud- 
ity. Such informal and live wording, above the 
common level of the street and the homes of 
most children, but never shot over their heads 
to suit anybody's ''toploftical'' ideals, should, I 
believe, be the practical and everyday standard 
of the elementary or high-school teacher, both 
in his own expression and in that which he en- 
courages from his pupils. It is this sort of power 
that, not alone the boy or girl who goes to work 
after the sixth or eighth school year, but rather 
that every one, whatever his intellectuality or 
culture, needs every day in speech or letters or 
other informal expression. Attaining this should 
be the first aim of the teaching of composition. 
Good colloquialism, as defined by the dictionaries 
and illustrated in numberless examples of ex- 

^ Pages 43-47; 144-46; cf. the same writer's "The Secret of 
John Bunyan," in Essays out of Hours (p. 75), and Quiller- 
Couch On the Art of Writing : chap, v (" On Jargon ") and pp. 
285-89 ("On Neologisms"). 

182 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS ' 

cellent and informal use, is precisely the level 
of expression which I am here suggesting — re- 
moved on the one hand from the vulgar and dia- 
lectal and incorrect, and filled on the other with 
a life and suitableness and homely clarity that 
formal and literary speech or writing has in only 
exceptional cases. Formality we may well work 
toward, whenever need for it appears, by devel- 
oping appropriate situations. But these may 
not appear most naturally, perhaps, till the period 
of bombast and declamation which average chil- 
dren reach about the middle of the high-school 
period. For everyday English speech and writ- 
ing, the appropriate ideal seems to be the best 
usage of the best users of the language in their 
informal and unstudied expression.^ 

We must certainly hold reasonable stan- 
dards of correctness and clearness and good 
taste if we would help children to widely effec- 
tive expression; but we must never limit our 
standards by narrow, prejudiced restrictions if 
we do not want them to encircle and choke all 
expressive impulse through the confusion and 
horror of constant proscription. As a practical 
measure it may be worth suggesting that a 
teacher will do well to consult at least the ob- 
1 Cf. p. 131. 
^83 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

servations of present best usage in the reputable 
dictionaries, and his own careful observation 
as well, rather than accept merely the judgment 
of his personal taste or any other criterion not 
widely based. If from children's crudity and 
heedlessness we may help them by guiding their 
slowly maturing appreciations, through discom- 
forting stages of garish and blatant wording, of 
wild-growing euphuism, of exultation in all that 
is most trite and outworn, to achievement at last 
of some understanding of the beauty in simple 
and concrete and homely expression, we shall 
probably have led them far in the v/ay of highest 
attainable artistry. That this growth must be 
inspired always by the best examples, really 
understood and appreciated, is doubtless evident 
enough. 

Making Use of Good Examples of 
Expression 

(i) Reproduction and imitation 

For the child's actual use of what he discovers 
as possibly valuable in the literature which the 
class carefully study, there are two distinct 
methods. The first is consciously re-using the 
ideas or the technique of the work. In various 
184 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

places we have noted the relation of story-repro- 
duction and the presentation of dramas writ- 
ten by some one else, to grasp of organization, 
fixation of correct form conventions, and devel- 
opment of effective wording and sentence-struc- 
ture. Recitation of matter well organized and 
stated in a text, or committing to memory — 
where the children express what they really 
understand — may have related values. And 
finally, deliberate, prescribed imitation of models 
lies apparently in the same category. For imi- 
tation problems present not alone the expres- 
sional project — where the method permits and 
recognizes a true project — hut also the specific 
method for its solution. 

All these ways of reproducing other peo- 
ple's technique or ideas, though they have, I be- 
lieve, by no means the same values as original 
composition, appear to be of good effect in pro- 
portion as the child has a real interest in the 
thing he is doing and thus makes his performance 
not stupidly mechanical, but alive. Whether he 
is putting his own spirit and individuality into 
what he speaks is not difficult to determine. We 
may have the testimony of his voice and whole 
bearing as to whether he is presenting a real 
experience or words only. Then too, we have 

?85 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

long, I hope, passed the stage in educational 
practice where absolute accuracy is wanted in 
children's work of this sort; except of course in 
necessary recitations of mere fact, we desire the 
child's personal touch to what he gives. If his 
emendation is inferior to the story itself, the 
children will be prompt enough in telling him 
so, and comparisons thus instituted and dis- 
cussed are excellent training. 

(2) Application to original problems of methods 
discovered 

But different and, I believe, greater values 
may be had where a child simply comes against 
the problem of expressing a live and important 
experience of his own and must find out for him- 
self what use he can make of principles and 
methods of work that he has discovered in pre- 
vious study of models. Given such a problem — 
and without it composition as we are consider- 
ing it is impossible — I submit that the child 
had better be left quite free to develop his own 
aim in attacking it, generally with the stimulus 
of the class discussion, and solve it as best he 
can in his own way rather than by any one 
method noted or required. The wise guidance 
of the teacher must of course be devoted to sug- 
186 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

gestion of real projects that are fully within the 
powers of the children to solve, but that they 
must stretch their minds to compass. If he 
will see to it that these problems often need 
for their effective meeting methods which the 
children are just then discovering in story or 
text, he can without any prescription succeed 
in bringing their newly gained knowledge to 
bear on constantly new and increasing difficul- 
ties. 

And however much we may be inclined to 
chafe sometimes at bungling and roundabout 
means of handling what seems to us a perfectly 
obvious difficulty, I believe we have need to hold 
ourselves pretty sternly in hand and allow the 
class, if they can, to propose various modes of 
attack, condemn those that fail under fire, and 
select the most practicable. In some cases, like 
the explanation of a game, they may discover 
that only one arrangement can be made fully 
clear; in others, where many approaches are 
possible, the class may decide that the ways are 
best which show a clearly original handling, 
fusing the results of previous study and experi- 
ence and producing an individual way of or- 
ganization, or finely specific or poetic wording. 
A good example of an experience so vividly 

187 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

realized as to result in new and apt expression 
is given in Dr. Dewey's The School and Society, 
where one child wrote that the water pulls and 
another that it tore the calcium out of the rock.^ 
Normal children with ideas and experiences that 
they really want to talk or write about rarely 
need more than the stimulus of the class discus- 
sion to give them various methods of work from 
which to select; and they can generally see the 
point of group criticism when they fail in a cum- 
brous or inept method. Indeed, there are very 
real values once in a while in having the chil- 
dren set to work on a live project unaided and 
uninspired even by the class suggestions, to dis- 
cover what level of attainment each one has 
reached through the previous meeting of prob- 
lems — a sort of composition test. Only in the 
cases of the hopelessly dull and sodden, I be- 
lieve — in work, at any rate, beyond the pri- 
mary grades — should any prescription of spe- 
cific method be needed save perhaps as a quite 
temporary crutch. 

Thus the study of literature, rightly ap- 
proached, not alone suggests new and interest- 
ing experiences and projects for expression, but 
many good ways of meeting problems that the 
* Page 68 (ist ed.). 
i88 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

child's interest and activities from day to day 
lead him to attempt. This study of models to 
find out the ideas and methods back of their 
construction should bring the children to greater 
consciousness and heed of the methods of effec- 
tive expression and a gradually evolving freedom 
and artistry. It is hardly too much to say that 
every normal child has potentialities of some 
artistic development. And provided he is not 
hemmed in too far by prescription, but only 
checked and guided by the evolving demands 
of his social group for greater effectiveness — 
clearness and vigor and beauty of expression — 
there is the greatest probability that he will 
achieve power of meeting the facts of his experi- 
ence with keen attention, organizing them with 
respect to their relations and significance, and 
expressing with some effect the ideas that he 
has need and motive to discuss. 

The Ideal of the Finished Product 

It seems worth while to canvass briefly the 
subject of the standards by which we shall judge 
children's attempts at expression, for there is 
the special danger in our study of excellent 
models that we shall come to hold for children's 
work the standard of adult and finished products. 
189 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

But if we appraise the work of immature minds 
in the light of what we ourselves are inclined to 
call excellent — by adult judgments upon ac- 
curate wording and sentence relations, mature 
organizations according to relative values, and 
the like — the result is pretty certain to be fatal. 
In the matters of organizing ideas and building 
sentences, letting our criticisms go ahead of the 
child's understanding only means his "angry 
confusion" and distraction of attention from 
essential matters that he is capable of mastering. 
In criticism of wording, there may ensue not 
only these results, but either the child's unnat- 
ural overshooting into a vulgarity of pendantic 
stereotyped expression apparently to fit his 
teacher's demand for formal literary usage, or, 
far more frequently, a reaction into contempt 
for all fineness of expression and content with 
a barbaric and meager and stupid English worse, 
if possible, than his first state. On this point 
every teacher should find most valuable several 
references to the Ideal — or Golden Calf — of 
the Finished Product in Dr. Miller's Psychology 
of Thinking} "The ideal of the finished product 
is absolutely vicious," he insists, "except as it 
functions to determine the remote goal." ^ 
* Pages 109-14, 121-22, etc. ' Ibid., page 112. 

190 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

The most valid conclusions from this consid- 
eration of developing standards of expression, 
then, appear to be somewhat as follows: — 

First, since both forms and standards of effec- 
tiveness in expression rise from social need, the 
first step in improving work should probably 
be a child's realization that he needs better ex- 
pression, and that a given form or mode of or- 
ganization may prove valid and effective. 

Second, the essential form-conventions, since 
they must simply be fixed ineradicably in habit, 
need to be worked toward one at a time till they 
become practically unconscious reactions, and 
this without confusing correction of points not 
yet mastered. 

Third, principles of sentence-structure and of 
word-choice for clearness and artistry, like those 
of organization or prevision, must also be under- 
taken one at a time; but the best mode of at- 
tack in this case is different: The child must 
work to discover, in repeated attacks on his 
own real problems, what mode of organization 
or sentence building or what word will gain his 
effect, try any method he can discover or de- 
vise, and thus come to formulate principles of 
structure or discriminations in the meaning or 
aptness of words and phrases. 
191 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION 

Fourth, the child's study of good literature 
and the frank criticism of his own work by the 
whole class are the guiding forces in this ad- 
vancement. 

Fifth, whatever judgments the teacher at- 
tempts to make of the clearness or artistry of a 
child's expression must be based, not on a com- 
parison with adult standards of excellence, but on 
a full understanding of what children of a given 
mental age can do and of what the class will 
naturally approve and condemn, and always in 
the fullest possible specific knowledge of the 
powers and difficulties of the individual child. 

To sum up: principles and forms must be ap- 
proached only as their need is clearly estab- 
lished; as undivided attention can be given each 
one till it is fully established; and in a method 
suited to gaining the best effect, whether this 
is drill on forms or thoughtful exercise on rela- 
tions and discriminations. Attack that is not 
prepared, concentrated, and determined has 
little chance for success. Particularly, the ever- 
lasting attempt to criticize work and to estab- 
lish discriminations and principles according to 
ideals too fine or remote for the comprehension 
of the pupil must be always not alone futile, but 
positively harmful. 

192 



EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

It has been the aim of this study to present 
a development of expressional pov/er in chil- 
dren through the cooperation of a truly social 
class. For this, we have seen that composition 
subjects may best arise naturally from the 
child's vital interests, as projects that appeal 
to him ; and that composition probably develops 
best through group discussion, careful organiza- 
tion of ideas, cooperative criticism, and organ- 
ized study, based always in needs realized by 
the pupils, for discovery and use of good methods 
of work. It may safely be assumed, I believe, 
that the subject so developed may produce re- 
sults not only of power of expression in individual 
children, but of ability to take interest in com- 
mon projects and to cooperate in friendly fashion 
for their achievement. It is only as we see the 
study in these largest relations, and not as an 
affair merely of chastening and expanding the 
verbal powers of the boy or girl, that it becomes 
clear how different a subject it is coming to be 
from the sodden, idealess drudgery of themes 
swoopingly red-inked and at the earliest pos- 
sible moment thrown into the waste-basket. 



OUTLINE 

For socializing the children's eager but non- 
social joy in expression, we shall attempt using 
two other natural child-activities — 

1. The child's direct experience suggests expres- 
sional projects 

2. His interest in accounts of other experiences 
both 

a. leads to further expressional projects, and, 
h. more important, may be developed into co- 
operative work and creative criticism by the 
group 3 

I. THE SOURCES OF COMPOSITION PRO- 
JECTS IN CHILD-ACTIVITIES 

A. Natural child-activities suggest many subjects 
for expression — 

1. These must be vital and concrete — whether 
direct or at second-hand — and full of activity 
and personal appeal 2 

2. Four typical interests — in stories, play, hand- 
work, and observation — suggest various lines 

of composition work 6 

3. Experience got at second-hand is of value only 
when thoroughly digested 8 

B. The vital projects thus originated are of three 

types, based on (i) the story-teller motive, (2) 

195 



OUTLINE 

the teacher motive, and (3) the "community- 
worker" motive 15 

1. The story-teller motive is to celebrate one's 
self and to entertain others with real or fanci- 
ful adventures 16 

2. The teacher motive is to explain games and 
processes, difiSculties in studies, and the like 22 

3. The community- worker motive is to coop- 
erate in meeting real social needs . . . . 25 

4. In projects like (2) and (3), we may help 
children to see that valid opinions are based 
primarily on observable data 28 

5. Many situations suggesting a wider audience 
introduce the motives to written work ... 31 

a. to preserve what is especially well done . 33 

b. to publish beyond the class group ... 33 

II. THE SOCIAL GROUP AS AN AGENT IN 
EXPRESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

A. We need first to discriminate two stages in ex- 

pressional development: (i) unstudied, happy 
talk, and (2) prepared composition 37 

There are three processes for the class group in 
developing prevised compositions — 

B. Group discussion may select interesting projects 
and canvass methods for carrying them through 44 

As a result, each child should proceed to careful 
planning and deliberate expression, doing in his 
own way his share of the group project .... 45 
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C. The class criticism of each child's work should 
commend honest effort and suggest specific bet- 
terment 47 

1. The spirit of the class evaluation must be a 
creative interest in making each one's work 
the best possible; its aim is to develop prin- 
ciples of criticism 49 

a. We need to see that the prepared themes 

are allowed to be free and spontaneous and 
childlike, just as in conversation .... 50 
h. We may seek first suggestions as to the 
ideas and their organization 51 

2. Criticism of manner of presentation should 
commend improvement, make specific sugges- 
tions, avoid heckling, and resolutely demand 
minimum essentials 52 

D. The criticism of written work has special prob- 
lems 55 

1. As too severe demands are speedily fatal, we 
should hold no higher standards than for pre- 
pared oral work 56 

2. Plenty of time and training for proof-reading 

for a few specific points is essential .... 56 

3. The class pride must also check up the writers, 

for form essentials especially 57 

a. The ideal is one hundred per cent attain- 
ment of a few possible points 58 

b. We may make the class judgment graphic 

by publishing composite grades, awards, etc. 59 

4. For corrections and correction-symbols, we 

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may perhaps substitute (i) class and black- 
board work, (2) pupil correction of a few spe- 
cific points, and (3) conferences 60 

The third process of organized composition work, 
systematic study of prevision and development of 
expressional standards, is the theme of Chapters 
III and IV. 

III. THE ORGANIZATION OR PREVISION 
OF IDEAS 

A. Limitation and grouping of subject-matter is the 
first step in prevision 

1. Class criticism may help the child to select and 

develop only one thing 68 

He next discovers need for grouping the 
ideas he selects 71 

2. In the first type of grouping, the plan may 
be shown in a sentence listing ''what happened 
next " through the story 72 

3. The second type consists of throwing larger 
wholes into a few convenient groups ... 76 

a. A plan sentence, as in (2), naming the 
groups, and a hke sentence for the details in 
each, makes a simple, practicable outline . 78 

b. Children must not for a long time try han- 
dling the whole of such large subjects, but 
single phases only 82 

4. The third organization-type is a grouping 
about an interpretive sentence — the writer's 
conclusion 86 

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B. Arrangement and connection of units of subject- 
matter — a parallel process — seems dependent 
on the success of limitation and grouping; four 
large types of arrangement are noted .... 90 

1. Time order, the all but universal arrangement, 
is varied first by the demands of the audience 
for — 

a. the project stated first in explanations . . 92 

b. vividness and interest in beginning stories 93 

2. For firmness and force in various types of 
themes, the emphasis principle suggests — 

a. striking details put first 94 

b. unexpected or significant ones reserved for 
the last 95 

3. For clearness in explanations it is essential to 
put basic matters first — 

a. in games and other processes, the apparatus 
and the principle or purpose 99 

b, in all cases, what is known to the reader or 
hearer or most readily comprehensible . . 100 

4. In describing visual perceptions — in geogra- 

phy, etc. — it is generally necessary — 

a. to give first the specific sketch-outline . . 103 

b. to fit in concrete details according to their 
arrangement in space 107 

5. Connectives may be developed for showing 
relations with unmistakable clearness; we may 
work for artistry later 109 



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IV. THE EVOLUTION AND ATTAINMENT 
OF EXPRESSIONAL STANDARDS 

This problem is here divided into two distinct 
phases: 

A. The form conventions essential to be established 
in unconscious habit come within the groups: (i) 
correct grammar, (2) punctuation, (3) spelling 
and pronunciation, and (4) further needful cour- 
tesies of speech and manuscript form . . . .115 

1. It is first essential to determine upon so few 
essentials of present usage that we can fully- 
master them 117 

2. We must next find how many and what 
forms we can establish one hundred per cent 

in each school year, and fix these 121 

3. In this establishment, two stages are neces- 
sary 136 

a. Realization of the right form and of its 

value through reproducing such conditions 
as probably gave rise to the form . . .137 
h. Complete fixation of the form through (i) 
drill with social motivation and (2) use of 
the form in solving real problems . . . 140 
(i) This requires careful proof-reading and 
resolute checking-up by the class . . 147 

(2) We need also cooperation from out- 
side the class 148 

(3) The aim is intelligent self-correction . 150 

B. The development of effectiveness in sentence- 
building and in word choices requires growing 

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keenness and accuracy of thought and fineness of 
taste 153 

1. Unlike the process of form-fixation, realiza- 
tion of need, discovery of broad principles of 
structure, and conscious work to apply these 
makes up the procedure here 154 

2. Study of sentence-construction may aid in 
developing children's powers of viewing ideas 

in relation i5^ 

3. Achieving accuracy in wording means grow- 
ing appreciation and practice of clear and spe- 
cific statement 167 

4. Development of artistry in word choices needs 
to be based on appreciation of fineness and fit- 
ness of expression i74 

5. We may make use of literature studied 
through (i) reproduction or imitation exer- 
cises; and, far more valuable, (2) attempts 
by the pupils to adapt methods they dis- 
cover to the meeting of their own problems 184 

6. If we attempt to apply the standards of adult 
literature in criticizing children's work, how- 
ever, the results are Hkely to be disastrous . 189 

Social composition projects, arising naturally 
from children's vital interests, discussed by the 
class as cooperators, carefully organized and 
solved by each child in his own way, and criti- 
cized in a creative spirit by the class, form the 
basis of this study. Such projects, completed by 
study of method based always on needs discov- 
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ered, should result not only (i) in power of in- 
dividual expression, but (2) in ability to take in- 
terest in common aims and work with others for 
their achievement. 



